Can't afford to feed my husband

[Prusik]

Gah, the title sounds pathetic! Please don't rip me to pieces for the fact that he should be feeding himself but it's the simplest summary I can give.

DH is 6ft7 and skinny. He eats a lot to maintain his weight. He's both milk and egg free (milk is allergy, egg is intolerance as his gut tends to get inflamed). He also tries to avoid sugar as he was finding he was getting major energy slumps during the day and reaching for sweets.

Ok, so here goes. I did the food shop last night and it was £100. Haven't bought any luxury items apart from I bought four cartons of supermarket brand apple juice and haven't yet bought meat for the week.

Try to fill him up on protein, ie nuts, chicken wraps, etc as empty carbs just don't seem to cut it. I rely on cheap meat where I can, we eat a lot of mince. And I bulk things out with cheap veg and potatoes. We cook chilli with beans, pulses, etc and I make my own humous as that's a good fix and so much cheaper than the supermarkets.

I'm just at my wit's end. For various reasons we're now at the arse end of poor. We're going down to one vehicle and are really struggling. We don't buy coffees out, don't go anywhere which costs parking... everything we do is free. But I'm still struggling to afford to feed DH. I do buy fruit in for the baby and am starting to cut corners with what I eat just so DH and Ds can be fed. I'm not going without but will just have jam on toast for lunch rather than anything better as I don't want to use food up. This is far from ideal as I'm 28 weeks pregnant change in circumstances happened after I conceived

We get tax credits and child benefit.

Any tips for feeding a very hungry person on the cheap?? He's not greedy, he genuinely needs the food. ds is beginning to look like he will be the same

whilst feeding him chickpeas and baked beans for dinner!

That may not end well for anyone...

Ditch the nuts and the wraps. They are luxury items.

Just both of you eat normal meals and if he needs more, he can fill up on bread and marg.

We fry spices for our curries and have done for a long time, it's cheaper and tastier - DH is the curry king of the house and makes an amazing variety of curries. Sunday was a mild vindaloo which Ds demolished.

@somerville I really appreciate your kind post. I'm not sure if anyone has advance searched me but my posting history shows what strain we've been under - I have a couple of threads created where I was really struggling. You're right that perhaps DH can't take on my strains too, his plate is very full. I'm definitely just looking for anything I can do to fix our situation.

I don't even know why I'm awake right now. My mind is buzzing with thoughts from this thread. I'm exhausted but can't sleep. I've been really poorly since last Sunday with some sort of flu bug and can't seem to shift it and I have noticed my weight has started to drop (although that's normal for me in pregnancy - I do seem to lose body fat).

Shop at Aldi or Lidl they are much cheaper. Nuts are very expensive eaten in that quantity.
He seems to be quite fussy about what he’ll eat putting allergies aside and you seem to pander to him.
Porridge for breakfast. He can make it in work.
Home made pasta salad for snacks.
Big jacket spud for lunch with a tin of beans.
Fibre bran type cereal before he goes to bed.

OP, my 18 mo DS is gluten intolerant and DP has chemical sensitivities don't ask so I've had to look at diet closely. I completely changed the way I shop, now I spend £30-40 every three weeks at the butchers and freeze the lot, pulling it out when I need it. the last meat shop looked something like this -

• 8 chicken breasts
• 4 sausages
• 2lb beef mince
• 4 beef burgers
• 4 Chinese pork belly/rib
• bag of gammon bits
• 3 pork loin
• 3 pork belly strips

I also order a veg bag and 2 fruit bags from a company who grow or source fruit and veg as local and as ethically as possible, which costs £22.50 a week, last week's looked roughly like this -

Carrots, onions 1kg potatoes, 6 eggs (standard in every bag)
Fennel
Turnips
Leek
Sweet potato
Leafy greens
Bananas, satsumas and apples (standard in every bag)
Grapes
Blueberries
Kiwi fruit, bizarrely

Obviously I then have to stock up on cupboard staples but I've gone from spending £50-£70 a week in Aldi for the three of us to £35-40, we use a juicer and I do gluten free baking to get through the mountain of fruit and I manage to do a batch cook a week too. Is there a way you could use a butcher/fruit and veg company? Genuinely not being snobby, I was really resistant to the idea until I realised how much money I was saving!

I am on maternity leave and it leaves us with very little wriggle room on money. Few ideas based on what we do;
If you can, Asda at the end of the day sells of the ‘fresh baked’ bread for as little as 10p.
Switch out on all your soaps, household cleaning items, toilet roll etc to the absolute basic you can buy, or see if you can bulk buy online.
Dried beans, pasta, lentils etc are cheaper.
We’ve pretty much cut out all meat. It’s expensive and not as filling as fibre-filled foods.
Buying veg from reduced section in supermarkets, as they’re usually on the last day, I cook them up and freeze. (The freezer is my best friend)
Also, as you’re pregnant, can you get anything via your midwife? I thought you can get bread and milk (maybe an alternative for you?) with vouchers?
Nappies, can you buy cheaper? Tesco’s own are very good and far cheaper than branded.
Keeping cost down of water and heating by turning radiators off apart from one room you’re in, short showers, turning the water off to soap up etc.
Can you sell anything? DH sold his guitar and piano on gumtree (sad, but needs must) and one day when we’re in a better position we might get new (second hand) ones. I’ve sold clothes, all our old dvds and cds (taken them to CEX along with iPod and tv) I did a car-boot sale, but it’s time consuming and people are ruthless with prices.
I’m sorry you’re in this position, it absolutely sucks, but hopefully it will get better soon

Hi op it sounds very hard for you at the moment try and loom after yourself. Just wanted to add a few ideas firstly i would try and stop buying the seperate food for your husband and all try and eat mostly the same for lunchI would plan for example on sunday you make a huge pan of filling soup you can add pasta/ chickpeas/ lenti/ pearl barley plus loads of veg. That could be for all 3 of you for a few days with a few slices of bread then say Wed do a huge pasta bake using brown pasta or you can get red lentil penne ect. You could do cheesy pasta with tuna and veg or tomato with a bit of cheap bacon and veg. Teas i would do what your doing but add things like dumpling ect to fill up is their a egg alternative ? To make big homeade yorkshire puddings.pots of stew in slowcooker with cheaper cuts of meat. I would look at local butchers and see if you can find one that does deals also see if you can find fruit and veg shop/ market stall. You seem to be buying plenty of fruit and veg but didnt say of your husband is taking this to work or snacking at home i would try and get him to take say a banana to work as most other fruit not very filling.For breakfast i would make a huge pan of flapjacks with peanut butter , nuts and seeds. For snacks he could have crackers with peanut putter or oatcakes with humous. You have the same plus boiled egg. Also just wanted to add and not sure if its nationwide but where i am waitrose has spend 80 and save 20 on online shops you can do this 3 times before xmas. We have just done a shop and stuck to all waitrose essentials and offers might this be worth a look? Good luck

4 chicken wraps is greedy and I don’t care what anyone says!

Pasta doesn’t fill him? Questionable I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t satisfied after eating pasta?! It’s very filling

Try musclefood. You get a lot of meat for your money.

Other than that I can say the cost of a supermarket shop is right dieting these days. It’s very hard to keep costs down when prices are so high.

Toasties are your friend. Eggs for yourself too. Poached / scrambled/ with toast

Has he been tested for coeliac?

I know someone lean, fit, active, generally healthy, who always assumed that he shovelled in obscene amounts of food because he burnt it off.

In his 60s he was still fit and active, but started to get very ill with all sorts of food intolerances. First time in his life that he had any kind of chronic illness. After about 18m was diagnosed with coeliac. Changing his diet totally changed his life. Now that his gut has healed, he doesn't need to eat as much in order to maintain a healthy weight. All his other food intolerances disappeared.

Unfortunately, a lifetime of undiagnosed coeliac has left him with osteoporosis and a higher risk of certain cancers.

Thanks all.for the advice. DH doesn't eat the fruit. That's for Ds and me generally (more ds than me). Eg DS and I will share a banana at breakfast and an orange at lunch

DH isn't greedy, he's good at listening to how much food.his body needs. I'll leave it a day or so and get him to book a doctor's appointment or will wait for the next flare up and unleash the fury!

Prusik I had to do it through childhood to it’s a very hard habit to break. Plus I don’t think you are doing anything wrong by wanting to look after your husband I’m the same and I actually enjoy the meal planning and shopping. Some people aren’t really listening and just focusing on the stuff they wouldn’t tolerate and calling that out.

I am with others do look after yourself maybe you could change the jam to peanut butter or egg that way you are getting more protein and fat and it will feel more filling.

You are doing incredibly well considering and ignore all the negativity iv picked up some great tips on the thread. Off to Morrison’s later to see what this veg box is all about it sounds fantastic value.

Take what’s been useful to you and never mind the rest!! I’d still give hubs a couple of prods to go get some gp tests done but not your problem I know.

Your weight is dropping because you’re giving your food away!

Honestly OP your relationship with food does sound really odd. Has it always been?

OP you need to get yourself to one of the Sri Lankan/Indian/Chinese shops for most things in bulk. I went to a local Sri Lankan shop and bought a 10 kg bag of brown rice for 7 pounds. White rice was 5. Chickpeas/kidney beans/black eyed peas were 25p a can. The dried chickpeas/lentils/dals etc were 2 pounds for 3 kg. Since you seem obsessed with nuts, 1 kg of Almonds for 7 pounds. similar price for Cashews. Raisins were 3 pounds for 1 kg.

For cereals and other things on your list, Lidl/Aldi. They are seriously cheap. Also, you need to get yourself a big bag of spuds. Our local market does 25 kg for 3.95. I understand that it will be too much but fill up on potatoes. It can do you no harm.

Since no one has mentioned this: 7.95 for a can opener??? 1 pound at any local shop.

Just sending support OP. Unfortunately the best diet for ibs is low fodmaps which cuts out beans and pulses (and limits nuts). Sometimes you also need to cut out gluten, lactose and fat. It doesn't leave much left and if I had to factor in a tight budget and pregnancy restrictions too I think I'd explode. Xxxxx

@longestlurkerever did you have to do it? I’m on a low fodmap and couldn’t reintroduces lot of the stuff as it turns out my gut hates most of the things on the high side but it really does make a difference.

Have you worked out how much a week you can afford to spend on food? If you have a budget (60 pounds a week?) I think it might help manage working out what luxury food treats you can still squeeze in and which ones are just too expensive.

For what it's worth we are dairy, soya and egg free due to food allergies and we normally spend about 70 pounds a week in Tesco. We could do it for less but don't need to.

Get the book How to feed your whole family a healthy balanced diet with very little money :-) it’s by Gill Holcombe. My husband sounds similar to yours and my kids are the same.

Apologies as I haven't read the full thread, but look at old fashioned recipes which were very much designed to fill up at low cost, such as dumplings with a stew etc. The Pauper's Cook Book and their ilk are good for this and usually available for 1p on Amazon. Modern concepts of healthy eating are generally not economical when it comes to feeding hungry husbands/teens.

Wraps are very fashionable these days, especially for the health conscious. Do you know why?

It's because a wrap is a good way to fool yourself into having the equivalent of a huge salad sandwich without most of the bread and without feeling deprived when you see your bread-less lunchbox. Substituting a wrap for your usual sandwich like this is a fabulous diet trick. However, as your husband and your budget are finding out, it doesn't work if you are genuinely hungry at lunch and not just trying to break a bad habit of eating too much (for your build). If you are genuinely hungry, you will just keep eating wraps until you're actually full.

If your husband has no food intolerances, he needs to switch back to ordinary loaves. They're cheaper than wraps.

Oh, and bulk buy almond milk in an Aldi. It's 59p a litre. Aldi's Everyday Essential peanuts are cheap, and their almonds are about £8 per kilogram.

I think wraps are a bit of a con. There's no raising agent so the bread is denser, fooling you into thinking that one wrap is less bread, but the larger ones have the same number of calories as two slices of bread, so you're not eating less bread at all.

Also, if you try to put a decent amount of filling in them, it all falls out, so you end up putting a measily amount of filling in them (and certainly if you buy them as ready made sandwiches, there's hardly any filling in them) and having a second wrap, because one isn't enough, but then you've eaten the equivalent of 3 or 4 slices of bread .

Wraps are nice, I like them, but they're not necessarily a healthy alternative to a similar sandwich.

Monthly budgeting at the moment is really hard. We still have trickles of money coming in from DH's business and i'm self employed so my money is very variable. All I know is on a month to month basis things are massively tight. I have money set aside for next month but as of yet am unsure about the month after. I know I have money coming in and that I have to save it to cover Jan but things are getting tighter and tighter.

Low FODMAP would be a nightmare.

I'm going to get my step dad to pick me up a bag of potatoes from his local place (no idea where that is) as he lives in the west country so it's cheaper.

I tend to lose body fat during pregnancy. It's not a surprise to me.

I'm not sure my issues are around food as such, more just that I feel the need to put everyone else before myself. DH is constantly "telling me off" for not putting myself first. He joined some of my therapy sessions when we lost our first baby so has developed quite a good understanding of how I tick. It would be counter productive for him to just start dictating what I eat as it would just create a dependancy - he's not daft and fully understands the consequences of that. This is something I need to sort myself.

My thread wasn't supposed to be about my fuckedupness but apparently the issue is a lot more complex than just budgeting. Te budgeting tips have been amazing though and I'm going to make some changes.

@Mustang27 thank you so much for your kind words

@longestlurkerever having to do low fodmap would be a disaster. DS also has long legs to fill ten months old and he'll happily demolish 2 egg scrambled egg, half a piece of toast and a banana and I'd dearly love to give him a block of cheese with his scrambled eggs to give a little extra. and I'm having ANOTHER boy...I hope this one doesn't take after his dad with food!

@mustang it's my dh who's on it, and it controls the flare ups but he's still unwell and losing weight. like the OP, I do find this impacts on the whole family. Sympathy though - I can at least have a cheeky lunch at work.

You are definitely buying lots of poor value things. You could make your money go a lot further than that.
If I was on a tight budget, I definitely wouldnt be buying bags of nuts or almond milk. Almond milk is about £1.40 a litre. Soya milk you can get value and costs 59p. Its also higher protein and better for you

Buy cheap bread and cheap peanut butter to fill him up and also youd be better eating that than jam sandwiches too