22 Useful Tips How to Eat Healthy Even if You are not Wealthy

To energize sport activities and enhance the result an athlete should stick to particular foods. Thus his daily diet must consist of nutritious, muscle building and only healthy ones. The problem is that many people simply cannot afford such expenses, especially due to today’s economic circumstances. In fact, 10 years ago spending $200 a week on bodybuilding food wasn’t much of a problem as it is now.

To crown it all the majority of people, unfortunately, dislike the idea of spending an hour a day preparing food. They don’t realize that cooking healthy meals which helps to build muscle and lose fat is not muddling time away.

Let’s see how we can have a cake and eat it – to eat healthy food and run to austerity budget with minimizing the grocery bill and food preparation time.

Here are 22 useful tips to make it work:

1) Lose weight by eating fewer calories. That’s also a good way to cut your expenses – Buy less, eat less, spend less.

2) Prepare food yourself. Doing this you can control portion sizes and ingredients. You can purchase a special cookery book like Gourmet Nutrition or try some healthy recipes on Project Swole.

3) Prepare your food in advance. Cook your meals for the next day the night before, or as it’s appropriate for you. You will notice how it will save your time.

4) Give your preference to whole food. They are cheaper and more nutritious than processed foods. Nutritious foods contain protein which helps to build muscle, not to store fat.

For example, you can chose between these nutritious foods:

— Proteins: frozen chicken breasts, fish in a can, eggs cottage cheese, yogurt, whey protein, and milk.

— Carbs: whole grain pasta, brown rise, uncooked oats, beans, fruits, and vegetables.

— Fats: olive oil, flax seeds, real butter, natural peanut butter, and assorted nuts.

As for supplements, they are considered to be cheaper, easier and quicker, but still they can’t be compared with whole food. However they can be really of great help if you are pressed of time or short of money. Here are some alternative variants:

— Multi-Vitamins: They are much better than white Centrum or generic vitamins from Walmart. 12-in-One Soft-Gel Multi Vitamin contains everything you need - 117 nutrients, 72 trace minerals and 47 fruit and vegetable concentrates. These soft-gels are much easier to swallow than many of the large vitamin pills.

— Protein Powder: Optimum nutrition protein powder is the highest quality powder that you can get in bulk.

— Essential Fats: Pharma Omega, for example, is high quality omega-3 fish oil. You can purchase this product online for reasonable price.

5) Drink a lot of water or herbal tea, and also watered natural juices. Filter and mix beverages of your own. You can save a lot of money by filtering and drinking tap water, and mixing up drinks like Crystal Lite and different protein shakes by yourself. Avoid fizzy drinks, of course.

6) Avoid calorie dense foods! Buy only healthy food such as whole milk, potatoes, whole grain pasta, brown rice, uncooked oats, nuts, and so on. They are also filling and cheap.

7) Shop by calendar. Fruits and veggies in-season are much cheaper. Besides veggies in-season are more nutritious and tasty.

Buy at local farms and farmers markets. They offer fresh, nutritious foods. And again have a nice opportunity to economize buying in bulk and thus getting some extra free goods.

9) Always have food with you when you’re out (both for snacks and whole meals). Fast food is bad food for you, it’s unhealthy. As for healthy commercial food, it is rather expensive.

10) Choose frozen fruits. They are easy to thaw, and can be eaten alone as a snack as well as combined with such dairy produce as yogurt or cottage cheese. Besides when frozen fresh fruits still keep nutrients. Store them in a freezer and they won’t go bad.

11) Don’t forget frozen veggies. They have a lot of advantages - they are also cheap enough, easy to use (don’t need to be washed and cut before cooking them), and easy to store (can be stored in a freezer for quite a long time).

12) Use generic and store brand foods which are considerably cheaper than brand name foods. As a matter of fact, generics as well as store brand foods are often secretly made by the same companies that make the brand named counterparts. At first you can notice a slight difference in their taste but within a couple of meals you’ll be used to them.

13) Buy in bulk. It will save both your time and money. Pay special attention to promotions and sales, where you can get twice as much food for the price of one. Ordering food from online stores is also a good way out – buying in bulk you get free and fast shipping and great discounts.

14) Minimize your shopping time. Buy in bulk. Pick up a right shop which is not far from your place and where you can buy everything you need. If you still have to shift between several locations try to arrange your shopping effectively – for example, you can purchase the majority of goods at your local shop, then get the rest of what you need (like fresh veggies and fruit) at some farm that is along the way, and as for the supplements – just place an order at some online store.

15) Make a shopping list of necessary produce. Put down everything you need for the next 2 weeks and do your shopping according to your list.

Actually, it would be sensible to shop alone or with someone who shares your commitment to diet and savings.

16) Never shop hungry. This can tempt to buy “wrong” items that are not on your list.

17) Buy age-discounted foods. As a rule, after one day grocery stores often discount bakery products by up to 70%, after a couple of days they lower prices on meat goods by the same 70 %. You can buy several pounds of meat and bread before it reaches it’s expiration date, and store it in your freezer.

18) Compare prices of competitive brands by checking the unit price. Besides don’t forget that a bigger package, as a rule, is a chipper one.

19) Cut and save coupons. You can find them in newspapers, magazines, and on the back of supermarket receipts.

20) Keep membership cards which will allow you to use special sales offered by many grocery stores, (Shaws, for example). It will take you only about 3 minutes to sign up.

21) Start a garden! With a little garden of your own you can have healthy in-season veggies and fruits. All you’ll have to buy is seeds. Growing greens of your own you can control chemicals and pesticides in them, and get a good exercise, too.

22) The ultimate solution: start a farm! Besides growing greens you can keep chickens, pigs, and cows to get free milk, eggs and meat. Sell the excess food at the market to earn money and buy something you can’t grow yourself.