Ideas for losing weight on a budget?

[Cappster]

I shop really frugally but at the moment I need to lose some weight; in the past I've gone to the Special K diet site for a diet plan but it tends to stack up - £90 for a weekly shop, as opposed to my normal £60.

We do buy a lot of fruit and veg usually, and eat quite healthily, but main meals tend to often involve sausages/ bacon/ cheese/ insert cheap high calorie item here

I have real problems trying to decide to eat every week even if I'm not trying to diet, which is why I like the Special K site because it just makes everything easy and tells you what to buy.

I'd ditch the Special K for a start. It's quite expensive, high in sugar and nutritionally very poor.
Get some porridge instead and you've saved £s already.

Buy fruit and veg thats on offer.

Homemade soups are healthy and cheap and are great for lunches.

Base your main meals on less fatty protein like chicken and fish. Frozen fish is often on offer in supermarkets and at the fish counter theres usually a deal on something or other.

I've got a couple of bbcgoodfood books which are really good or check out their website

www.bbcgoodfood.com/search.do?keywords=budget+healthy

www.bbcgoodfood.com/search.do?keywords=budget+healthy

Thanks for that link Shaxx!

oddly, the Special K diet doesn't actually require you to eat any Special K. It's not the old plan where you ate cereal twice a day. It's really good, and I'd recommend it. I just bought Lidl cereal when it said have a bowl of cereal

Jacket pots and beans or tuna and salad
eggs- omelettes, scrambled etc - v good at keeping you full
Porridge
Then lots walking or walk/running or running - all free!

Slimming world also uses quite lot meals with extra lean mince, spaghetti Bol, chilli etc . You can always use half a pack or make double by adding lots cheaper veg.

ah granary, I could live on poached eggs

hoorah

I am NOT going to slimming world because a) I can't afford it and b) my mother goes to the only meeting I could make

if sausage and bacon are your thang www.carbfree.wordpress.com my blog on low carbing.

and what you have to ask yourself is - by not spending on the shit you shovel in your mouth, how much are you actually saving - and does this therefore make your diet plan - whatever you choose to follow, cost effective?

I spnet about £4 on a Paul McKenna book & CD, and now I eat much much less, but can also eat anything I like, so my food bills have really reduced!

Erm, how about eating half as much?

ah, cyb. I don't eat loads and loads - the weight has crept on over a period of about 10 years.

You could try something like Exante if you want to just do a month long weightloss blast - it'd cost £100 but that would be for all meals for 4 weeks.

And then you woudl put it all back on again

£100 wasted

Exercise more

www.myfitnesspal.com is free and brilliant - just log everything you eat, and all the exercise you do and stick to the number of net calories it give you (you can set it to lose a certain amount per week, 1lb is generally recommended)...

This is the only thing that's ever worked for me - 4 weeks in and I'm 5lbs down! :)

Good luck

cyb obv thinks I am an idiot

to everyone else, thanks.

Cheap foods include:
dried pulses
value chopped tomatoes (staple for me)
tins mackeral and sardines
frozen value veggies
frozen white fish
value eggs
value cottage cheese and yoghurts

But cyb does have a point, eat slightly smaller portions of the same food and cut out snacking (which does cost). Drink stacks of water.

I have done the Carol Vorderman detox diet before. I pick a few recipes I like and make them in bulk (soups/risottos etc). Then I freeze them in portion sizes so no thinking about to be done at meal times!

Dont think you are an idiot!

Just think you are overthinking things.

Stop thinking in terms of 'diet' food. Eat what you want (there are budget meal planners on MN somewhere) but eat less of it and move more

I have been on a ?diet? since September and in all that time the only ?diet? foods I have bought in all that time are:

a) Low fat yoghurts / cottage cheese / fromage frais ? and I always buy the supermarkets own brand, and big pots etc.
b) Diet coke/sprite (I know, I know, I have now stopped drinking, waste of money aside from anything else).
c) 1 cal cooking spray (1 bottle has lasted 10 months, just this week bought 2nd bottle)

TBH I don?t understand the whole industry around diet food, and why people would buy it. If I?m going to have chocolate I?d rather eat a stick of kitkat than a weightwatchers chocolate roll or whatever they do. I?d rather have some tesco low fat yoghurt, some defrosted raspberries with some muesli than have a weightwatchers ?dessert?. Its true that fruit and veg is expensive, but frozen veg is really good value, and you can often buy veg close to best before dates and eat right away or make it into soup. And I buy from the value range whenever possible. And lots of healthy food like tinned fish, chopped tomatoes and pulses are cheap. Meat/chicken/turkey is cheaper when dieting as I?d never now eat more than 100g of mean/chicken as a portion etc.

And not snacking saves money too

cyb - what, me, overthinking?

My husband would say you knew me very well

I don't agree that it's as easy as just eating half the amount. If you eat less you are likely to binge eat after a week or so. You need to make sure you are full, so eat less of the sausages (or whatever) and fill the rest of your plate with green veg/carrots/salad etc.

Whilst I'm not sure its as simple as eating half the amount of "rubbish" food, I disagree about the binge point. Some people fill up on mountains of salads and vegetables and then binge as they are missing out on chocolate and nothing hits the spot.

Plus if you eat something high in fat (say ice cream) even though the quantity is small you'll feel full as the fat will make you feel satisfied.

I don't think its a simple as big volume = full. As an hour after the huge salad I would feel hungry again but an hour after the ice cream I wouldn't.

Yeah that was what I mean forever, just didn't have time to type it all. I think it is about satisfaction so a little bit of chocolate here and there won't hurt but will stop you from feeling deprived and therefore more likely to binge on it. I find that healthy protein really helps me.