Groceries: $173.00 (-$2.21 from June)
Unnecessary Foods: $26.68 (+$3.21 from June)
July 2015 Total: $199.68 (+$1.00 from June)
Another bad month for food. I did good by decreasing the amount of money I spent on groceries, but the unnecessary food costs were still way too high.
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| Chocolate chip cookies with brownies in the middle. My curiosity was too strong to resist. |
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| Two slices of BJs pizza |
The trip to Brooklyn screwed me up, as I had crappy foods on both days. Upon returning, it took a while for me to get myself back into my normal routine. I had a couple slices of BJs' pizza, and I ate cookies offered to me by a co-worker at the shipping depot. Usually I say no, but my willpower was still weak from that Little Debbie snack binge. One night I went to the supermarket to buy some bread. I was talking to Brooklyn Mike on the phone when he mentioned something about Entenmann’s cakes. I remember telling him, “You really shouldn’t have said that.” Why?
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| Louisiana Crunch Cake |
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| Perfect glaze. I felt like a kid again. |
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| Approximately 5 minutes later. For shame... |
If this particular cake wasn’t there I would have had no problem, but Louisiana Crunch cake was my absolute favorite cake when I was a kid. Seeing it right there in front of me was just too much to resist.
My weekend food is usually the same: Chicken and rice. I love it as the taste is getting better and better with each experiment. I now add butter and more onions to give it that Chinese food rice flavor. As I slowly begin the process of using the LoseIt app, I decided to weigh my food:
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| Chicken on top, rice on the bottom |
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| I almost did a double take when I saw this number |
5 pounds? Seriously? A total of 10 pounds of rice and chicken for the weekend?? I was stunned, and had no idea it was that much food. What’s crazy is that sometimes I eat it all in one sitting, and then find myself “hungry”. So I’d eat a big bag of organic chips to add onto the already excessive weight of food. 5 pounds of food should be more than enough food for one day. I know I have to reduce this number by attacking the problem step-by-step. I’ll go into detail in another post. Now, onto some good news:
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| Whole wheat English muffins with eggs and green peppers and onions |
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| The salmon in the middle is surrounded by potatoes, stringbeans, red peppers, and broccoli. Very good meal and much more filling than I had hoped. |
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| My patented salmon and rice |
Adding variety to my breakfast is extremely important, as eating Cheerios every time can get redundant. This was my first time making eggs for breakfast and it tasted very good. I had a chance to buy wheat bagels, but opted for the cheaper whole wheat English muffins. I’ll try both in August. I felt like the meal was missing meat, so I’ll be sure to buy organic turkey sausage patties/links next month as well. The salmon with the new steamed veggies was great, and it was nice to not have zucchini ruining the flavor like last time. The salmon and rice was okay, but I think I'm staying away from the Nova Scotia salmon from now on. The salmon is way too salty, especially since there's more than enough sodium in the rice itself. Regular salmon will do just fine from here on out.
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| A huge bag of raisins for $6.99 at BJs |
After falling into the unusual habit of eating sweets, I decided to try something to solve my sugar problem. Instead of cakes and snacks, I simply bought a big ass bag of raisins. I believed that the size of the bag would discourage me from eating everything in one sitting, and I was right. This one bag of raisins lasted 3 weeks, and completely curbed my appetite for sugary foods. I know it's still sugar, but I'd much rather have it coming from nature than from processed foods. Combined with my organic chips and Skinny Pop, I think I've found a good snack combination to compliment my meals (or to eat in between meals) every month.
August will be all about the spices. I need to start adding flavor to my established foods, like my fried rice, turkey burgers and salmon. If I can find the right combination of spices my food will taste even better, and I’ll have even less temptation for outside foods in the future.
P.S.: $199.68. I really didn't want to go over the 200 mark, so I was incredibly disciplined on the last days of the month. Even when I was starving at work with hours to go, I refused to buy anything. I never want to have to write that I spent over $200 on food for the month. That's a surprisingly strong motivator. I knew this monthly food report was a good idea, and now I have proof.
I love reading your posts. While I am usually good at tracking my food (not this past week because I was on vacation), I have never weighed my food nor do I track how much I spend. Many years ago, every month during my cycle I would eat the 7 lb Chocolate Fudge cake from Costco usually in 2 days. I only knew it was 7 lbs because it said so on the package. Now that is shameful...and I would combine it with a half gallon of vanilla bean ice cream, too! This was back when I had a 6-pack, so nobody would've ever known if I didn't out myself. Thank goodness I finally stopped eating that badly. It was a health issue which forced me to stop.
ReplyDeleteNow, tracking the money I spend on food could be helpful. I purchased my first house with money I saved by cutting back on restaurants. At that time, I ate every meal out. I haven't monitored my food spending in years. Today is August 2nd which is the only reason I know I've already spent more than $70 ($26 was yesterday's lunch). Yep. I need to start tracking this.. Thank you.