Eating Healthy on a Budget - Tips and Tricks for Grocery Shopping on a Budget

Your Budgeting Experience Starts Before You Get to the Store

• Have a small meal before you even set foot in the grocery store. With a full (not stuffed) stomach, you'll be less likely to act on those impulsive urges to buy a family-sized frozen lasagna to take home, immediately throw in the oven - if you even get that far - and devour in its entirety.
• Use a simple weekly menu planner and make a grocery list based on the menu. This way you only purchase the ingredients that you will be using that week. If you don't have the time to get to the store every week, make two menus, save up a little longer, and purchase food for two weeks in one trip to the store. If you're a super planner and love being over prepared like me, you can research the average cost of each product you'll need to buy for your menu. That way you'll have a better idea of what you will spend when you get to the checkout line. There will be no more racing hearts or flushed faces when the checker finally gets to that carton of eggs at the end of your conveyer belt.
• A weekly menu also helps you with a healthy diet. With all of your meals planned and all of your ingredients purchased in advance you will be more inclined to use the food you have in your home rather than reverting to that ever-tempting fast food dollar menu. With a menu, you can also plan out portion sizes as well as the amounts basic essential nutrients per portion. By considering each piece of food you add to your menu according to metabolic break down and how it will fit into your over all balanced diet when planning your menu you'll have an all around better image of what you consume.
• When creating your menu, consider a healthy number of calories per day. This number will depend on gender, weight, age, height, level of activity, and whether you want to lose, maintain, or gain weight. Look at labels, look up calories per foods.

Grocery Store Game Plan

• When you get to the store, stick to the outer perimeter where the fresh foods tend to be. Avoiding the center of the store will almost completely help you avoid pre-made packaged foods that are usually overpriced, easy to make with fresh ingredients at home and usually lower in nutritional value than if it was homemade with fresh ingredients.
• Read nutrition labels. Labels break each product down into a certain number of portions at a certain amount of product per portion, following these labels will help you get your money's worth of product and will help you maintain a balanced diet. This is good news! It means you can buy that gallon of Mocha Almond Fudge ice cream without feeling those pangs of guilt. By following the nutrition label and only eating one serving portion of ice cream you'll be able to enjoy your ice cream longer, you won't have to go out and buy more ice cream as quickly, and you'll keep that calorie count down. It's also a good idea when reading labels to consider other foods on your menu for the day and making trades if you might go over on fats or calories. For example, if your mouth starts watering when you open the freezer and see that bucket of mocha-almond-fudgy goodness by all means eat it (one serving only please) but opt-out of scarfing down that bag of sour cream and onion potato chips later on in the day.
• Price compare. The store brand is usually more inexpensive; however this can sometimes be a trade off for quality of taste or nutritional value. Compare the nutrition labels and ingredients of the store brand to the national brand to determine if there are discrepancies in nutritional value, however there is no real way to determine discrepancies in taste quality aside from testing the product out. I have found most store brand products to be almost identical to their national brand counterparts. There are, however, a few things such as oatmeal and coffee that I tend to be a little more choosey with, but I try to weigh the importance of the product to my over all balanced diet. For example, I eat oatmeal almost every morning for breakfast. It is full of protein and very healthy, so I choose to pay a little extra for the name brand because I know the quality of some store brands isn’t as good, and it's a very important part of my balanced diet.
  
• Buy in bulk when it's economical. With a well planned menu and the space to store your bulk foods this plan of action can really save you money. Buying in bulk can make your initial purchase a bit more pricey than it normally would be, however bulk items are usually priced cheaper per size of product or number of products. The idea is to buy products in bulk and make them last for a longer period of time. This might be a good idea to do at the beginning of the semester, if you're a college student, when you have some extra cash from summer or holiday jobs, holiday gift cards or cash, or if you happen to get a difference check from grants or loans for living expenses.
• Utilize in-store and online coupons to your advantage. This doesn't mean that you should use every coupon you see, or buying more of a certain product because the larger one has a coupon for a product you weren't intending to buy attached to it. If you had intentions of purchasing the other product already then it might be beneficial, but if not you could probably buy the original size product and do without the free one. Also, don't forget about coupons from weekly mail circulars and online coupon resources.
• Keep in mind that a weekly balanced menu and grocery list is very personal. To set yourself up for success, your menu should include foods that you like and are familiar with; foods that are affordable and that you would be able to prepare for yourself.