If you're overweight, how much do you spend on food?

[MarinkyDinkyDink]

I suppose my AIBU is 'To think I can't afford to put on weight'... but I MUST be! I'm not on the breadline. But eating any more just looks SO expensive!

This is my question:

1. I really want to put on weight
2. Every time I go to buy excess food (thinking calorie surplus) I think of my bank account
3. But when I go food shopping, I see soooo many overweight people. Some of whom MUST have less disposable income than me
4. How have they got to that weight!?
5. My jazzy banking app tells me I spend £700/mth on food (+3kids, no other adult).
6. That's 350 on food shop and 350 on eating out (we live in a very cafe-y area, but it's like fancy quiche deli salad places. Ain't nobody getting fat on this stuff)
7. Apparently UPF is great for putting on weight but I really don't like the taste and texture of processed food (which is apparently fab for making anybody overweight)

I like homemade, pure food. Like, if I want a sausage roll, I'll make sausage rolls. I don't like the taste of pre-made or cold food. I only really like hot and fresh, made on site etc.

1. Food is so expensive! I don't buy snacks or crap for the house because it's just.. more money. But discussing snacking with school mums, I'm starting to think maybe I don't keep enough snacks in.

I only eat 3 meals, I can't dream what would happen to that £700 spend if I started snacking too!

If you are overweight: HOW!? Do you spend £700+ on food/mth?

I just want to understand the balance I need to make between my spend and my weight. Is my food spend unusually low? Do I need to start splashing out on the calories?

I get that being overweight for many isn't desirable. But being underweight is no treat either.

But what are you eating every day.

There no point asking what I'm eating.

Are you really this unintelligent?

Go to the chip shop every day. It won’t cost too much for an extra portion of chip with every dinner you eat.

cheap white bread for toast and jam every morning. 3 slices every morning should do it.

Just buy single cream and add it to your coffees and sauces. You'll soon put weight on.

Cheap, processed food is cheap and makes people fat!

It's pretty unusual to spend so much on eating out I think. It's half your budget. Just add more oils, cheese, nuts and carbs etc to your home made food. It doesn't have to cost much to get fat tbh.

I can't possibly sit at home and gain weight. I'm sole parent to 3 kids, full time job, I'm barely at home.

I'd love to cut the cafes but we're out every day and food in cafes is quick and there, now. Usually I just want a fat bowl of chips but cafes here don't serve that.

I get that a lot of this going to be the sheer volume of food I eat. That's exactly my concern and hence my question: the cost of upping my food shop.

Surely the answer to your financial quandary is to stop spending £350 a month eating artisan lettuce cups at hipster cafes and buy more calorific stuff to make at home? £350 a month on eating out is quite a lot so your budget for food isn’t really the issue, it’s that you don’t seem to be spending much of it on eating nutritious and calorie dense foods at home.

This is why I don't understand how on £700, I can't gain weight.

Some people just can't OP. I am the same - if I ate a cake on the hour every hour for a week I would a) feel extremely crap and b) gain about 1.5 lb. I too would like to carry more weight, but I'd have to eat so much more I'd feel rubbish and it would cost a fortune.

People are being snarky because they it's unfamiliar to them. Doesn't make anyone more superior to anything else, having this body type

Cheese. Nuts

And hot cross buns are not expensive atm.

OP you are being fully ridiculous. £350 is a huge amount to spend eating in cafes. Cut down on that and make a good roast dinner with Yorkshire pudding and roasties.

Though I would stop spending £350 a month in bloody cafes for a start. Good grief, woman 🙄

Buy full fat milk cheese butter put on every meal.
Heavy duty mayo sauce in your fancy salad

Fat people eat rubbish cheap food… that’s how! Frozen food and no fruit and veg! It’s cheap

Shut up you awful ejeet

Maybe try cutting out the £350 on cafes and spend another £100 in the supermarket? I’ve got 3 kids and we eat well and I spend about £550 a month on food

Well i spend and eat significantly less since getting diagnosed with hypothyroidism and being put on antipsychotics but yet I weigh more also weird how that works when someone isn't stuffing their face, oh yes because weight gain isn't just about food 🙄

Use double the amount of oil and butter than you normally would when cooking.

Use olive oil as a condiment, drizzle it on top of your veggies, spag bol, everything.

Put cheddar on top of everything.

Switch to whole milk for everything, tea, scrambled eggs, pancakes, etc.

Think of excuses to eat double cream… scrambled eggs, mashed potato, strawberries…

Have a (whole) milk drink before bed every night (hot chocolate, horlicks, or just plain milk if that’s too processed for you).

Fatty meat cuts tend to be cheaper than lean: 20% mince instead of 5%, chicken thighs instead of breasts, pork belly, bacon, sausages…

Make yourself homemade desserts 3 or 4 times a week. A simple chocolate cake, suet putting (eg spotted dick, syrup sponge pudding etc) or pancakes if you’re pressed for time, are cheap as chips, and are dead easy to make and are over 2/3 fat and sugar.

When you eat fruit, put sugar on it.

Eat fewer vegetables as they fill you up - save space for all the fatty stuff.

You’ll pile on the pounds in no time at all.

Im overweight by exactly 7 pounds if BMI is to be believed. I spend about 300 to 400 a month on the food shopping for me and my 1 DC. I too like whole foods and enjoy cooking. Think wild caught salmon from the fish monger, salt marsh grazed lamb chops from the butcher and eggs from forest grazed hens. I too eat 3 x meals a day. Snacks are usually bananas and apples. If I have a sweet treat it has to be something truly decadent, like an almond flour brownie. Im also training for an ironman. Us fatties aren't all scoffing UPF and sitting on our arses. Id recommend having apples with any kind of nut butter, its extremely calorific.

There are 1300 kcal in 200g walnuts according to google. Could you eat three packs a week in addition to your normal food. 30 quid a month. If you don’t gain roughly 1lb a week on that get your thyroid checked!!

What are you getting in supermarket, OP? £80 a week or so strikes me as quite low for a family of four, is there much quality meat/dairy etc in there? The only way I would get our bill down to that would be downgrading the quality of our food. We are all normal BMIs and I could easily spend about double that, although I try to keep it under £150 a week, because good quality meat and ingredients without shite in them tend to cost more. To get to £80 a week I would either just not be cooking at home much at all or be eating poor quality stuff.

Not saying it’s impossible to eat good quality food and a healthy, varied diet on £80 a week for four, I am time poor so pay more for some convenience factors, but just interested as the eating out to groceries ratio is quite unusual.

Weight is not based on food alone so your request is not viable. Some people eat loads, have high metabolism and are slim, some people don’t eat huge amounts but have genetic dispositions, are of a certain age and don’t metabolise food the same way but are fat

Me too! But I add chocolate chips. And I drink it out of a MASSIVE cup that I bought from SHEIN.

It doesn’t need to. I spend about £60ish a week on food plus alcohol and any eating out on top. I eat healthily. Trying to lose weight but it’s slow. It’s utter nonsense that expense is stopping you gaining weight. Your issues aside, how can you spend so much more than me on food?
Edit: missed the 3 kids, just saw ‘no other adult’. Even so, though…

Just eat McDonald's for breakfast, dinner and tea.
Also do you drive? Give up walking, even if you can.
Also I recommend getting a mobility scooter to save your calories from melting away.
I also recommend shaking things up with KFC on a weekend as a cheat meal
Good luck getting fat like the rest of us you can join our WhatsApp group it's great

There’s no way you can’t find somewhere that sells chips where you live. Nowhere is that posh 😂