Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle When You’re Strapped for Cash

A Little Planning and Prep Goes a Long Way

Are you finding it a bit difficult to eat properly when money is tight?  It’s a familiar situation, not just for those who were caught in the recent economic downturn, but also for those who live on student budgets.  In this guest post, Jeremy Murray shares some insights on managing money and on maximizing your nutritional buck.  Jeremy is a 20-year old university student in Newcastle, Australia (studying physiotherapy) and a qualified personal trainer/group exercise instructor.  Despite his student budget, he manages to stick to his nutritional plan even with the added complication of living on campus and having to eat some meals in residence.

Jeremy plans and preps his meals ahead of time, to help him cope with his busy school schedule.  While most use their limited time as an excuse as to why they can’t exercise or eat properly, he uses it as his motivation.  Judging from a recent progress picture, his plans are working!

Getting Results!

Strapped for Cash?

(guest post by Jeremy Murray)

A lot of people often use a lack of money as an excuse to why they don’t lead a healthy lifestyle. Often it is just a cop out, but sometimes it’s a legitimate excuse. So the purpose of this post is to share some simple tips and ideas that I have found useful in my quest for a bigger, leaner and healthier body while living on a student budget without clipping coupons out of the Sunday paper (although there is nothing wrong with that!)

1. Have a Shopping List!

You might look like a dork walking around with a grocery list but its going to save you a lot of money. Write down everything you need according to where it is in the shopping centre and only get what is on your list. This eliminates all those extra goodies that add up.

2. Buy ‘Real’ Food

When you buy natural whole foods, (think meat, fresh fruit and vegetables, wholegrains, beans & nuts in their basic forms), you save a lot of cash. In comparison to pre packaged highly processed foods these are much cheaper per serve and obviously much better for your health. Just think how expensive a box of Cocoa Pops is compared to a bag of 100% whole oats.

3. Prep Your Meals For the Week and Don’t Waste Anything

Not only is pre preparing all your meals for the week a huge timesaver it allows you to be prepared for the busy week ahead and lets you pack a lunch box oozing with health promoting foods so you don’t have to waste money on eating out, which as we all know is much more expensive and less likely to be advantageous to your goals.

Furthermore, buying only what you will use ensures that nothing goes to waste so you aren’t flushing your hard earned cash down the toilet.

4. Opt for the store brand

Most generic products are exactly the same as their brand name equivalent. Why pay more for a label?

5. Buy What’s About to Expire

This goes for meat and produce. It’s always discounted so you save a lot of money and most of the time its going to last a lot longer if left unopened than the label says. Plus you just freeze it and then it’s not going anywhere.

6. Buy In Bulk

Stock up when things are on sale or buy wholesale then freeze it. Just make sure you compare units and prices. Things aren’t always cheaper in bulk.

7. Shop at Farmers Markets or the Local Fruit Barn

Doing this you get quality fresh produce that is in season while saving huge amounts of money. Nothing left to say here.

8. Stop Buying Bottled Water

For the life of me I really cannot understand it when I see people buying bottled water by the crate full. It comes free from the tap! Plus it has a huge impact on the environment and is much more expensive than petrol when compared liter for liter and we all know how much people, myself included, enjoy complaining about the price of petrol.

9. Shop Around for the Cheapest Gym Membership

Get out and do some detective work on the gyms in your area and find out which one is the cheapest and has everything you need. Don’t pay for luxuries like a sauna and pool if you aren’t ever going to use them. Furthermore try to heckle them down. You’ll be surprised how effective it is. Another great idea is to train outside, its free, its fun and you get to spend time outside in the sun. Who doesn’t enjoy that?

10. Supplements Aren’t Essential!

Finally, a quick word on supplements. Despite popular belief they aren’t essential to leading a healthy lifestyle. Focus on the basics of eating natural whole foods and reducing highly refined and processed foods before adding in supplements to your diet. Once you get the basics sorted you can invest in some if you have the spare cash.

Using these simple tips I manage to limit my spending on food to $70AU a week which really isn’t much at all when I eat 5-6 meals a day. However I do receive one meal per day from my college dining hall but that would only add on another $12AU or so to my weekly spend.

Tags: budget, Jeremy Murray, money, Nutrition, university