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Good morning! I hope January has treated you well. It’s almost over! 🥶 

I’m back to talking about the weather or time passing again. Send help with opener suggestions.

Oh, and you might’ve noticed I’ve started incorporating ads! I’m hoping to finally monetize this work a little bit so I can continue providing you with a quality product. Incorporating ads from companies I trust and would use, myself, will help allow me to do that!

If you can simply click a link in the ad (no purchase necessary), it would mean the world to me! That action alone helps me get paid for each newsletter. Y’all are the best. 🤘 

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🥗 Your Eating Healthy on a Budget Starter Pack

Well, the US has a new president, and groceries are still expensive. Surprised? We shouldn’t be. There’s not a lot we can do to change—and especially lower—grocery prices sustainably and quickly.

I’d say turn to eating out instead, but we know that’s even more expensive! Most recent data suggest that year-over-year grocery inflation is now at 1.8%, half that of restaurant inflation, which clocked in at 3.6%. Not too long ago, these numbers were 2% and 6%, respectively.  

Don’t fret, you hungry, hungry hippo! As a generally large, active man who eats a lot, I feel you. 

In this newsletter, we’ll break down some strategies to eat healthy without breaking the bank. I’ve outlined some strategies below:

1. Opt for eating at home over eating out most of the time

2. When you do eat out, be strategic

3. Shop at the right places (Aldi, Lidl, bulk)

4. Fresh & frozen minimally-processed foods over ultraprocessed

5. Prioritize Nutrient density

6. Learn simple, repeatable recipes to make at home

1. First and probably foremost, try to reduce your spending at restaurants and make the vast majority of your meals at home. 

We all have seen how expensive eating out has gotten. It’s hard to find any meal eating out that’s less than $10 or $12, if not double that at an actual sit-down restaurant. 

But you can still get a literal pound of meat (four servings) at the right grocery store for less than 5 bucks, and basically all fruits and veggies are less than $1 apiece. 

Restaurants can be a real budget buster. I recommend either eating out less frequently overall or just being more strategic and budget-friendly when you do, which leads us to our next point…

2. When you do eat out, be strategic. If you only want to spend $X per month at restaurants, you get to decide how that budget line item is allocated. 

Maybe you only eat out once a week, but when you do, it’s a real splurge. If you know you will only do it a few times a month, you can view it as a treat and relax about the menu prices staring you down and mocking your modest income. 

An alternate way to be strategic when eating out is to lessen the bill each time. If health remains a priority, skip the drinks and desserts. These are often filled with sugar and fat and upcharged more than most items! Opt for water, and if you want a sweet treat after, do it at home where you can both control the portion size and how much you paid for it.

As for cheaper healthy meals at restaurants, opt for basic options that include a protein and a side or two. If the portions are huge, eat slowly and take the leftovers home to make another full or partial meal out of the dish. Try to go for build-a-bowl restaurants like Chipotle or Cava, where you can get a large volume of whole, minimally-processed foods for decently cheap.

It’s also a great idea to join any reward programs or get apps that your favorite restaurants offer, so you can always take advantage of deals and offers.

Deploying these simple strategies can effectively reduce your restaurant budget while allowing you to still tip generously and enjoy yourself with guilt-free, planned spending.

3. The next tip is, when grocery shopping, shop at the right places! Where you get your food can have a tremendous impact on your grocery budget. 

Opt for the cheaper stores like Aldi or Lidl, or for the big “clubs” like Sam’s Club or Costco, which allow you to buy in bulk. Both store models reduce their overhead costs in unique ways so they can keep prices lower for consumers.

• Seriously, I still spend on groceries about what I spent in 2017 now that I shop at Aldi. Any time I need to shop at a place like Kroger (or God forbid, Whole Foods!), I am shocked by how much more expensive things are.

Don’t fret if you don’t have those options near you. Just do what you can. Opting for generic or store-brand products, no matter the store, is another way to drastically reduce costs without paying premium prices to subsidize the marketing of name brands.

4. Next on the list is opting for whole and minimally-processed foods over ultraprocessed options. 

I’m always astonished by how much a bag of chips costs! Remember I said you can still get a pound of grass-fed organic ground beef for 5 bucks? That’s less than a bag of name brand chips! The meat is incredibly nutrient-dense, while the “junk” food—though great-tasting—is often full of empty calories and devoid of nutrients. 

“Processing” of food is literally putting in work/labor to change it. When you buy processed foods, you pay additional charges for every level of processing. 

• Consider a whole apple or banana. It’s picked from the tree and shipped to the store (ideally). That’s about as unprocessed as it gets, and that’s why they’re cheap.

• An apple-flavored breakfast bar or banana pudding, on the other hand, is heavily processed. The original fruit is broken down, often stripped of nutrients and fiber, and combined with numerous other additives (often sugar, salt, fat, dyes, preservatives, etc.) to process it into the “food” that you buy in a box on a shelf.

You pay for all that processing, both with your wallet and with your health. 

Pro-tip: Freezing is very minimal processing and preserves foods’ nutrients very well! It’s a budget friendly and health friendly option.

Beware of marketing and health claims on packaged foods. Just because it says five wellness buzzwords on the front doesn’t mean it’s “healthy.” Learn to read nutrition labels. Prioritize protein, fiber, and vitamins & minerals. Pay attention to serving sizes. Minimize added sugars and fats. 

And remember, just because it’s labeled “organic” doesn’t mean it’s healthy. You can refer to the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen lists for what specific items it’s most beneficial to buy organic and when it’s totally cool to opt for the uncool, regular version.

5. Next on the list, and not too dissimilar from the previous point, is to opt for nutrient density over caloric density. 

I once heard a loved one describe his fast food picks in terms of “CPD,” or “Calories per dollar.” It sounds like a great way to eat cheap, but it also sounds like a fast track to obesity.

Let’s use that same mentality but flip the script to make both health and affordability a priority. NPD, or “nutrients per dollar” can be a much better way of thinking about your food choices. 

Maximize your nutrition while minimizing your grocery budget. It may take a little bit of research or learning on the front end, but once you have that knowledge, making high-NPD choices will become second-nature!

6. Lastly, it’s hard to eat most of your meals at home if you don’t know how to cook any of it. 

Cooking can seem intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be! Trust me when I say that my level of cooking is SO simple. Like the majority of the time, I’ll cook 2–3 pounds of ground meat or air fry some chicken tenderloins or fish. Adding beans is easy. Microwave or air fry some veggies. Add some seasonings or sauces. 

Cooking in bulk allows you to meal prep for several meals or days at a time.

Once you learn that not every meal you cook has to be Instagram-worthy, you are free to simply assemble a few ingredients and enjoy your ugly, healthy little meal. 

• And if that’s not your speed, you can still find plenty of simple meals online. My best friend has dozens and dozens of health recipes bookmarked on Tiktok. She’ll meal prep five servings of two meals on Sunday, and her lunches and dinners are set for the week.

• You really don’t need a hundred recipes memorized, either. Once you have some staples that you know how to cook, you can cycle through the same five, 10, 20 recipes as often as you want. Switch up the veggie or fruit sides and you’ve got endless combinations. 

Eating healthy doesn’t have to be hard OR expensive! It just takes a little intentionality on the front end.

If you feel overwhelmed by all the suggestions, start small. Make change one step at a time. Don’t bite off more than you can chew (pun intended). Your body and your budget will thank you.

✅ Take Action

Every newsletter's Take Action section will invite you to take small steps to improve your health. Recognizing that we all have different capabilities, I'll offer three different levels of action you can choose to take.

Level 1: Pick just one option to incorporate into your life.

Level 2: Track your budget AND your calories/macros?! If you can do one or both in a healthy way, you don’t have to do it forever. But tracking them for a month or two can at least help you learn where you’re at and help with predictions in the future.

Level 3: Incorporate as many of the strategies as possible to optimize your food budget and your health!

This newsletter is brought to you by… me!

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✍️ Drew's Picks:

• Workout Internationally: Check out these tips from how communities around the world exercise!

• Caffeinate responsibly: Use this caffeine calculator to determine your safe level of daily caffeine consumption.

Let me know if you found today’s article helpful! Do you have any other suggestions I haven’t mentioned?

And please remember to scroll up and click today’s ad if you haven’t yet! 💰️ 

Keep moving,

Drew

The content in Move to Improve is meant to be informative in nature, but it should not be taken as medical advice. It is always a good idea to consult with a trusted health professional before making any major lifestyle changes that could have a significant impact on your health. This is not a medical resource, and any opinions and articles are not intended for use as diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of health problems. They are not substitutes for consulting a qualified medical professional. Please think critically and take what I say with a grain of salt (aka don’t sue me).