And with all this talk of farmer’s markets and fancy schmancy grocery stores that sell $7/lb mushrooms… perhaps its time we talked about the other end of the spectrum.

A few months back, a reader who identified herself as Naturally Single Mom shared with us the following tidbits:

We ARE one of the few (if I understand this correctly) places that allows you to use food stamps at the farmer’s market. Here, they charge your EBT card in increments of $10, and give you tokens that you use as cash at the individual vendors.

Whole Foods – I’m not sure if it is company-wide or not (Erika’s Note: It is company-wide.) – does accept food stamps. I’ve never seen the EBT sticker on the door of any Whole Foods, or our local health food store that was just bought out by Whole Foods (Greenlife Grocery, referenced in the above mentioned article)…I guess they don’t want the rich folks to know that us poor people are shopping there?

I live in an area with enough grocery competition that I can stretch my food stamps – I shop buy one get one free sales, and stock up on stuff like cereal (the healthy stuff DOES go on sale from time to time), salad dressing (because if you have enough salad dressing, you’ll eat salad more often, right?), yogurt, bagged salad stuff (which sometimes makes it cheaper than buying actual lettuce and cutting it up, but is definitely not a “stock up” kind of thing), frozen veggies, stuff like that. (Yogurt freezes well, and I use the frozen stuff for smoothies.)

I also buy fruit when it’s in season and on sale and make my own applesauce and apple butter, or flash freeze berries, peaches, and other fruits for smoothies in the winter.

I use websites like Southern Savers and Hot Coupon World (which has a coupon database, so you can find printable coupons online.) I never knew that you could use TWO coupons when you buy one and get one free, until I found those websites.

I go to the recycling center once a week. (Ours is only open three days a week.) They don’t care if I go digging through the newspaper dumpster and take out the coupons that other people discard. I usually walk away with 30 or 40 full coupon inserts in about 20 minutes of digging. I don’t even buy the newspaper anymore (since all I bought it for was the coupons anyway!)

The best part about food stamps, for me, was being able to buy seeds and plants with it. I have a HUGE strawberry patch ($3 for 10 strawberry plants at Wal-mart, have more than paid for themselves, and they’ll come back year after year), blueberry bushes, even an apple tree, all paid for by food stamps. (The caveat here is that you have to buy them at a store that accepts food stamps. Home Depot and Lowes and any garden place that I’ve ever seen does not.) I have a garden in my front yard growing zucchini, crookneck squash, cucumbers, lettuces of all types, spinach, tomatoes, pumpkin, and watermelon. As long as it is going to grow into a food, any packet of seeds or plant is covered by food stamps.

I try to use natural fertilizers – banana peels provide potassium to the soil, crushed egg shells provide calcium. Both of which can be bought with food stamps.

Like I said, I find it horribly sad that because a rotisserie chicken is hot, it’s a no-go. If it is a cooked rotisserie chicken that has been refrigerated, then it is allowed. Because I guess poor people don’t deserve hot food? I can buy freshly prepared sushi, fancy Perrier water, or pork rinds, but not a hot chicken. It’s very strange.

She asks some pretty interesting questions, if you ask me. She also put me and my bargain hunting skills to shame. Excuse me as I go find a pot so that I can grow a strawberry or something.

But honestly, I’m taking advice from her on how to penny pinch. Y’all know I’m cheap. Cheeeeeeeeeeeap.

I’ve seen suggestions that the value of food stamps should double when it comes to fruits and vegetables… and while that might work, the question will always remain “Are there stores selling viable fruits and veggies nearby the most affected areas?” Any suggested solution that doesn’t address the very real issue of accessibility and information/education will come up sorely short… and while the government tries to duke it out with itself regarding these people’s purchasing abilities, there are people like the above who won’t be affected by it at all. It highlights the idea that says “the more limited your means, the more valuable it is to be resourceful.”

While I’m not quite there on the grow-it-yourself aspect (but I’m trying!), I admire that kind of dedication to clean eating. What other tips are out there to help people make the best use of food stamps possible when it comes to clean eating?

Recommended Reading:

• 5 Reasons You’re Spending Too Much on Eating Clean
• Save Money on Groceries: Buy It In Bulk
• Save Money on Groceries: Buy It In Season
• Save Money on Groceries: Go Weekly

Clean and Healthy Eating on Food Stamps is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. What’s In My Clean Eating Healthy Kitchen?
2. Does Your State Allow Fast Food Purchases On Food Stamps?
3. Can Fast Food Ever Be A Part Of Clean Eating?

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 22 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clean eating, food stamps, gardening, nutrition, saving money

Yeah, that’s kind of this processed food thing. And I know, in advance, that this is long. Frustratingly long, even. I’m breaking it up into bits, though, so don’t worry if you can’t take it all in at once.

What are processed foods? Allow me to shed some light.

A “processed food,” in general, is something that has had to endure a process to make it what it is before it is turned over to you. Almost everything that comes in a box… is processed. Almost everything that comes in a zip-sealed bag… is processed. Almost everything that comes from a big giant brand or huge corporation or massive factory plant somewhere… is processed. Almost everything that you purchase from a grocery store… is processed.

I mean, that includes a lot – that’s all the aisles in the grocery store! You’d have to scale the perimeter of the store to avoid that, right?

Let’s look at the history of food in this country over the past one hundred or so years.

Once upon a time, before food was big industry (meaning: before processed foods) and we were dealing with the fear of famine, people were much smaller. Being overweight was a rich person’s dilemma. Why? Because you have to ingest an AWFUL LOT of whole foods (as in, not processed) on a regular basis to develop and maintain an overweight physique in that day. So being overweight simply didn’t make financial sense. Things like bread, pies, cookies, cakes… they were rare – couldn’t always buy them at the store, so you had to make them at home. Highly unlikely that you could or would be able to bake sweets every single day for your pleasure.

Because they were concerned about famine, portions were rationed carefully. They didn’t want to be caught out there not being about to get food, and having little at the house. Sometimes, you’ll hear our elders talk about when whole grains were once rationed out to the masses because not only did they need to make sure they had it for the soldiers, they needed to make sure the supply could cover everyone in the event of emergency.

To sum it up, food wasn’t presumed to be plentiful, and it caused people to skimp, penny pinch, and exercise portion control.

Now, in comes the push toward larger food distributors – less focus on local, more focus on “getting big.” “Get big or get out,” I believe was the actual line. The US Gov’t honestly feared that they wouldn’t be able to feed everyone without food production going factory, and took every effort they could to try to get it there. With food production being taken to the factories, we were separated more from how our food was made. The further the process was taken from us, the less oversight we had in regards to what was in it. We used to have the milkman, right? You made arrangements with a local farm to have your milk delivered to your door, right? Now, if you drink milk, you’re buying a gallon that comes from a farm that you have no knowledge of. You’re buying from a brand.

I’m a small business owner, so while I could interject right here about what it does to our local communities to not be able to buy our food locally and keep our money in our communities… I won’t. Just know that I could.

As I said, the larger food manufacturing grew, the more we were distanced from it’s production, and the less oversight we were granted to it’s creation and ingredients. Because (in my opinion) the government wanted to simply do what it could to ensure that the US had a consistent food supply, lots of leeway was given to big food factories to help ease them along their way in supplying our supermarkets with food – glorious food! Want an example? The food industry was able to get the FDA to change the law – imitation foods that weren’t nutritionally deficient in comparison to their whole counterparts didn’t have to be clearly marked as “imitation.” (You can skip the below quote if you like because I’ve quoted it before, but it’s valuable enough to read twice.)

The 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act imposed strict rules requiring that the word “imitation” appear on any food product that was, well, an imitation … [And] the food industry [argued over the word], strenuously for decades, and in 1973 it finally succeeded in getting the imitation rule tossed out, a little-notice but momentous step that helped speed America down the path of nutritionism.

… The American Heart Association, eager to get Americans off saturated fats and onto vegetable oils (including hydrogenated vegetable oils), was actively encouraging the food industry to “modify” various foods to get the saturated fats and cholesterol out of them, and in the early seventies the association urged that “any existing and regulatory barriers to the marketing of such foods be removed.”

And so they were when, in 1973, the FDA (not, note, the Congress that wrote the law) simply repealed the 1938 rule concerning imitation foods. … The revised imitation rule held that as long as an imitation product was not “nutritionally inferior” to the natural food it sought to impersonate—as long as it had the same quantities of recongized nutrients—the imitation could be marketed without using the dreaded “i” word. — In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

Families who survived the rationing and the famine were happy about this! No more struggling, breaking their backs to stretch food. They could eat like the rich folks! They could also gain weight like ‘em, too. Alas, the way men and women were employed in this era, they weren’t granted the same amount of time for leisurely activity like the rich. In other words, we were eating “like the rich,” but not burning the weight off like ‘em. This part of the story, can be evidenced by Katharine Flegel’s study of weight gain from the sixties to the present. This New Yorker article summarizes it briefly:

In the early nineteen-nineties, a researcher at the C.D.C. named Katherine Flegal was reviewing the results of the survey then under way when she came across figures that seemed incredible. According to the first National Health study, which was done in the early nineteen-sixties, 24.3 per cent of American adults were overweight—roughly defined as having a body-mass index greater than twenty-seven. (The metrics are slightly different for men and women; by the study’s definition, a woman who is five feet tall would count as overweight if she was more than a hundred and forty pounds, and a man who is six feet tall if he weighed more than two hundred and four pounds.) By the time of the second survey, conducted in the early nineteen-seventies, the proportion of overweight adults had increased by three-quarters of a per cent, to twenty-five per cent, and, by the third survey, in the late seventies, it had edged up to 25.4 per cent. The results that Flegal found so surprising came from the fourth survey. During the nineteen-eighties, the American gut, instead of expanding very gradually, had ballooned: 33.3 per cent of adults now qualified as overweight. Flegal began asking around at professional meetings. Had other researchers noticed a change in Americans’ waistlines? They had not. This left her feeling even more perplexed. She knew that errors could have sneaked into the data in a variety of ways, so she and her colleagues checked and rechecked the figures. There was no problem that they could identify. Finally, in 1994, they published their findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In just ten years, they showed, Americans had collectively gained more than a billion pounds. “If this was about tuberculosis, it would be called an epidemic,” another researcher wrote in an editorial accompanying the report.

Food was becoming way more accessible to us. I do want to go back to the point about the FDA’s law about imitation substances, though. It does a lot more to the food industry than you think it does. Take a loaf of bread, for example. Bread has maybe five ingredients in it – flour, water, sugar, salt, and yeast – but if you look on the label for the bread in your house right now? You see what – hyphenated chemicals. The food industry now has the ability to put anything in your food, so long as it is not deficient in the nutrients that science recognizes are valuable… in comparison to the food it imitates.  Remember this part. No, really – remember this part.

So, if the foods aren’t nutritionally deficient, why is this a problem?

Well, how much credit do you give food science? The rule is simply that the foods cannot be deficient in nutrients that science recognizes as valuable. What about what science hasn’t spotted yet? What about all these hyphenated chemicals that science hasn’t identified (or is prevented from identifying) as harmful to our health?

And before you call me a conspiracy theorist, consider this: it took science decades to recognize that trans-fats – once a massive part of margarine and other major foods – were hazardous to our health. Believe it or not, the government still allows trans-fats in foods, and actually allows food manufacturers to lie about how much trans-fats are in their foods. (More on that later.)

What else, in these foods, is doing us in? Science doesn’t know yet. And really, since most of our food science studies are funded by the very industry they affect… do you genuinely expect science to find out? I’m not telling you that they’d intentionally fudge numbers to present favorable results – trying to remain unbiased, here – but I am telling you it’s easy to divert funds elsewhere… as in, another study. Maybe even… a study attempting to debunk something claiming their products are harmful.

That’s not the conspiracy theorist in me. That’s just smart business on their part… regardless of what it does to the consumer. Keep the consumer far enough away from the research, and they’ll never know the downfall of buying my product. It just happens that way.

So since this is all cyclical, let’s go back to that availability of food thing. Now, all this food (food, mind you, that seeks to NOT be nutritionally deficient although it admits that it is) is available to our families. We, knowing what it’s like to have to worry about food not being available, begin to indulge. Factories – and factory jobs – are springing up because industries are blossoming. Longer work hours, both adults in the household are now working, and all this super convenient food at hand. We’re eating what we can, when we can, and eating a lot of it… since we’re enjoying the ability to eat at our discretion, not at the discretion of a ration.

Keep in mind, also, at this time… a new generation of children are being born under this new understanding of food. Family tradition might lend to certain dishes being made a certain way, but lots of dishes are being replaced by the magic elixir in the box. Some of us have that Grandma who insists on cooking everything from scratch. We tend to write her off as crazy or paranoid because “Times have changed” and “No one has time for all that cooking,” or maybe because “This is the [insert decade]s, Nana, we don’t live in the kitchen the way you used to!” Things that are all true, but come with consequences.

I asked you, dear reader, to keep in mind the point I made earlier about hyphenated chemical ingredients in our food, right? I hope you did. The interesting loophole in the FDA’s policy about imitation foods is that there’s very little limit to what can now be put INTO food. That’s an important point.

You know how, if you leave food sitting out, it will attract flies? Why? Because flies and rodents are attracted to the same things that our bodies are attracted to in food – nutrients. Ever notice that with ALL the food in a supermarket, there’s rarely any ants or bugs in the aisles, but you have to swat them away from the tomatoes or kiwi in the produce area? That’s not because every area in the grocery store – except the produce – is sprayed down. I can only offer theory as to why that is. For starters, the processed foods have to be processed to maintain shelf life. They have to be able to handle being transported to the facility. They have to be able to withstand sitting on a shelf until purchased. They have to be able to withstand sitting in your cabinets until you cook them.

Can you do that with your home made cooking? I doubt it.

Here’s another question: What do you think they’re putting in these processed foods to ward off insects and rodents?

Last question: Do you think it’s a good idea to ingest the same chemicals that are put in food… food that flies don’t even want? The same chemicals that prevent flies from desiring our food, are the same chemicals we’re ingesting when we eat this stuff anyway. How healthy can that be? Nothing in the world can debunk what feels like logic to me.

Taking that one step further for those of us who DO indulge anyway, what about the fact that the average processed food contains more calories than it’s “real” counterpart? Remember my ranch dressing recipe that I shared? My recipe was 300 calories a cup. Kraft’s ranch dressing was easily 1400 calories. Let me tell you a secret I learned from working in restaurants. Foods that have to be reheated to be cooked are pumped with extra fat, because it helps maintain the flavor through the reheating process. Chemicals – like monosodium glutamate, found in processed foods with rich, thick, almost meaty tastes – help reheatables that have to be pumped with extra fat taste more pleasing to you. The convenience that the food offers may be a welcome benefit, but it comes at the cost of a massive excess in calories and unnecessary additives and preservatives.

So here we are, living in the new millennium. For breakfast, we’re eating cereal. For lunch, we give our kids lunchables. For dinner, we heat up a pot pie. (If you want a laugh, look at the ingredients list on the back of any of those.) For a drink, we have a capri sun or a coke. Instead of nutrient-filled calorie-light whole foods, we’re now indulging in calorie-heavy nutrient-light foods that’ve been mainly cooked FOR us. When we take in foods, our bodies are expecting a certain amount of nutrients and vitamins. If our body doesn’t get what it’s looking for fast enough, what happens? It compels you to eat more! Yes! Have you ever inhaled half a bag of wafers, only to be hungry again moments later? All that work your body put in to digest this vitamin-free food, only to find that there are no vitamins in it? Yes, it’s going to tell you to try again and eat something else.

The problem for many of us, is that because it’s so much easier and quicker to grab another processed food item instead of cooking.. we try to fix the problem with something that’d only make it worse. All the while scarfing down the calories, forgetting all the nutrients, and packing on the pounds while we’re at it. The convenience, the fact that very few of us know how some foods are cooked, let alone what the foods SHOULD consist of, has allowed us to eat much more with much less effort. Is that a bad thing? If you know how to moderate yourself, of course not. Many of us, apparently, don’t.

Having said all that (2600 words, and STILL not a record for me), I have to say this. I know we all lead busy lives. If you managed to read all of this in one sitting, I give you kudos – I couldn’t even write it all in one sitting. We have to scale back in a major way if we want to be healthy. In writing this, I’ve decided to break this up into a series, continuing it on with how I managed to wean my family off of processed foods and what it’s taught me about how my body interacts with food, and how it wants to interact with food. Big difference between the two.

So, keep your eyes peeled for the breakdown of this topic, and the continuation… that I’m opting to call Food 101. I look forward to your thoughts below!

Food 101: The Problem With Processed Foods is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. The Problem With Processed Foods, Part I: What Is Processed Food?
2. The Problem With Processed Foods, Part II: The Change In Food Manufacturing
3. The Problem With Processed Foods, Part IV: The Conclusion

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 14 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: black girls guide to weight loss, calorie counting, mentality, overeating, processed foods, saving money

The next time you go grocery shopping, look at your cart. Is there anything there that you like, but is unnecessary for you to buy THAT brand in particular? Let me tell you a secret. Generic foods/store-brand foods are often just as good as some of the better name brands sold on the same shelf. They’re less expensive because the grocery store wants to make sure that you can still get what you want even though you’re not paying as much as you might for the name brand. This way, they can ensure that you’re not pricing yourself out of owning the product entirely, and they can still squeeze a couple extra dollars out of you.

Now, let’s talk about generic and store brand foods. Most store-brands, regardless of the store, are made at the same production plant and then shipped to the production plants for these stores for labeling. Guess what else – did you know that MANY national name-brand manufacturers also produce those same store brand products? Which means… yes – Reynolds’ Wrap might’ve made that store brand aluminum foil. Yes, Mott’s might’ve made that store-brand applesauce. Don’t believe me? Ask MainStreet:

Many of the national brands actually produce store brand products, so besides the packaging, you may not even notice a difference between generics and their brand name counterparts.  For example, Alcoa, the maker of Reynolds Wrap Aluminum foil, produces store brand foil. McCormick produces herbs and spices without its signature label, and Birds Eye, known for its frozen vegetables, produces a number of frozen and canned vegetable products, according to Consumer Reports.

One major reason for the deep discount on store brands is they “don’t carry heavy product development, advertising and promotion costs,” says Tod Marks, a Consumer Reports researcher who blogs by the name “Tightwad Tod” on ConsumerReports.org.

Excerpted from Priced Out: Too Expensive to Buy Healthy? | A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss

Let me dig a little bit deeper, though.

Store brands are also called “private label” products. I know y’all hate wikipedia, but I’m quoting it anyway:

Private label products or services are typically those manufactured or provided by one company for offer under another company’s brand. Private label goods and services are available in a wide range of industries from food to cosmetics to web hosting. They are often positioned as lower cost alternatives to regional, national or international brands, although recently some private label brands have been positioned as “premium” brands to compete with existing “name” brands.

Richelieu Foods, for example, is a private label company producing frozen pizza, salad dressing, sauces, marinades, condiments and deli salads for other companies, including Hy-Vee, Aldi, Save-A-Lot, Sam’s Club, Hannaford Brothers Co., BJ’s Wholesale Club (Earth’s Pride brand) and Shaw’s Supermarkets (Culinary Circle brand). [source]

There are two things to note, here. Firstly, I don’t expect to see this information on wikipedia, but the fact is that the same private label companies that manufacture products for the store brands also manufacture products for the international brands, as well. You won’t find that information in a press release (or even listed in a recall notice) because that’d cost someone money.  If you take two containers of the same product from two different brands and compare the packaging, the “from” location, the nutritional information (as in the calories, the fat grams, the sodium and carb counts) and the ingredients… and all of it is the same? They were manufactured at the same location and are of identical quality. The only difference would be… the price.

A big reality is that the fastest (and, in a way, creepiest) way to find out exactly who is responsible for making what products… is to pay attention to food recalls.

Yes… food recalls. Want an example?

Spooked by the half-billion salmonella-tainted eggs floating around the United States, some consumers might be tempted to skip the egg salad and opt instead for a “deli sandwich.”But that could be a painful mistake, especially for Walmart shoppers. Get this, from the USDA’s meat-industry watchdog, the Food Safety and Inspection Services:

Zemco Industries, a Buffalo, N.Y., establishment, is recalling approximately 380,000 pounds of deli meat products that may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.

Yikes. And what, pray tell, is “Listeria monocytogenes”? According to FSIS, “listeriosis can cause high fever, severe headache, neck stiffness, and nausea.” Worse still, it can also cause miscarriages and stillbirths, as well as “serious and sometimes fatal infections in those with weakened immune systems, such as infants, the elderly and persons with HIV infection or undergoing chemotherapy.”

And where did this massive cache of dangerous luncheon meat end up? “The products were distributed nationwide to a single retail chain,” the FSIS press release states demurely, too polite to call out retail mammoth Walmart, the largest seller of groceries in the United States. It also refrained from fingering Tyson Foods, the globe’s second-largest meat company, as the ultimate source of the bad meat. Tyson, it turns out, owns Zemco Industries. [source]

The same “private label manufacturer” that provided Wal-mart its meat… is owned by a national brand. It’s not a far stretch to wonder what other brands Tyson supplies under “other names.”

As a beginning clean eater, it’s a bit of a struggle and takes quite a bit of time to find the right blend of brands for your home. But once you see the change in your wallet… it all starts to feel worth it. Give it a shot and see what works best for you!

Other posts in the series:

• Save Money On Groceries: Buy It In Bulk
• Save Money On Groceries: Buy It In Season
• Save Money On Groceries: Go Weekly
• Save Money On Groceries: Buy The Private Label (Go Generic!)
• Save Money On Groceries: Go Frozen!
• Q&A Wednesday: The $50 Challenge
• Save Money on Groceries: Go… Smaller?
• Save Money On Groceries: The Readers Share Their Tips!

Save Money On Groceries: Buy The Private Label (Go Generic!) is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Save Money On Groceries: Buy It In Bulk
2. Save Money On Groceries: Go Frozen!
3. Save Money On Groceries: Go… Smaller?

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

Get BGG2WL delivered wirelessly to your Kindle! Click here for more info!

© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: butter, carrots, crushed red pepper, garlic, generic, pinto beans, private labels, saving money, spinach, squash, store brands, tomato

Thus far, we’ve toyed with cutting fast food, upping the water intake, cooking dinner every night (processed or not)… but now, it’s crunch time. It’s time to get down to business.

Before I hit the grocery, I make a chart like this for myself as well as my little one. I can see, visually, what we’ll be eating throughout the week. Some things will be consistent – like, for example, my daughter eats an apple and a pear for a snack each day, or she’ll eat some cereal for breakfast – and some things, like dinner, are very different each night… especially if you’re like me and you like to try any and every random recipe you get your hands on.

Then again, the problem with trying any and every recipe you can get your hands on, is the number of times you may wind up going back and forth to the grocery. Hence… why you plan in advance. You do a little recipe shopping, write down the ingredients you’ll need for each recipe on the back of your chart, go to your kitchen and cross off the things you have… and everything else? Well, that’s your shopping list for the week!

Meet your new best friend (downloadable PDF file).

Download and print off the chart, then plot out your week. Keep in mind portion sizes (and allowances), what your recipes call for as well as expected cost for each item. Don’t be afraid to scrap a recipe if the ingredients cost too much.

We’re going to spend this week talking about that grocery list and, while I won’t tell anyone what they should eat (beyond just tons of fruits and veggies, of course), I’ll definitely point out things to avoid. It’ll be a fun one, that’s for sure!

Introducing: The Clean Eating Chart is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Clean Eating Boot Camp: Step Two
2. Q&A Wednesday: Is Clean Eating An Eating Disorder?
3. Welcome To Clean Eating Boot Camp!

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

Get BGG2WL delivered wirelessly to your Kindle! Click here for more info!

© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 23 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clean eating, Healthy Eating, saving money

Whenever we go grocery shopping, we’re always looking for the best deals. And if you hit up places like [insert wholesale store], [insert wholesale store] and [insert store notorious for having awesome deals on huge products] then you’re likely to find yourself with the giant box of popcorn, the huge jar of tomato sauce or the massive thing of mayonnaise somewhere in your house.

According to Brian Wansink, Cornell University Researcher and Professor of Student Behavior:

“We’ve done dozens of similar studies with dozens of different foods. With spaghetti, for instance, we found that the people who were given the large package of pasta, sauce and meat typically prepared 23% more – around 150 extra calories – than those given the medium packages.

Did they eat it all? Yes. We find over and over that if people serve themselves, they tend to eat most – 92 percent – of what they serve. For many of the breakfast, lunch and dinner foods we have studies, the result is about the same – people eat 20-25 percent more on average from the larger packages. For snack foods, it’s even worse.

On another occasion, we asked 40 adults at a PTA meeting to watch a videotape and provide some feedback about it. As a thank you, they were each given a bag of M&M’s – either a half-pound bag or a one-pound bag – to enjoy while they watched the tape. In reality, we didn’t really care what they thought about the tape, we only cared how many M&M’s they ate while watching it. After they finished the video, we weighed the remains in their M&M’s bag. The results were dramatic. Those who were given a half-pound bag ate an average of 71 M&M’s. Those who were given the one-pound bag ate an average of 137 M&M’s, almost twice as many – 264 calories more. Sure, a person saves some money by buying the big bag, but if he decides to watch a hundred videos in the next year, it will also cost him nine pounds of extra weight.

The bottom line: We all consume more from big packages, whatever the product. Give people a large bag of dog food, they pour more. Give them a large bottle of liquid plant food, they pour more. Give them a large shampoo bottle or container or laundry detergent, they pour more. In fact, with the 47 products we’ve examined, the bigger the package, the more they use.

[...]

Why do we automatically eat (or pour) more from big packages? Because big packages (like big portions) suggest a consumption norm – what is appropriate or normal to use or eat.

As all of our studies suggest, we can eat about 20 percent more or 20 percent less without really being aware of it. Because of this, we look for cues and signals that tell us how much to eat. One of these signals is the size of the package. When we bring a big package into our kitchen, we think it’s typical, normal and appropriate to mix and to serve more than if the package were smaller.

Although we may not finish the two-pound box of spaghetti when we make dinner for two, it makes us think it’s normal to take a few more bites than we would if it were a one-pound box. It bumps up our consumption norms and leads us to bump up how much we serve ourselves.

This is part of the reason why I always cringe when people say they spend more than a certain amount at the grocery store each week. I wonder to myself, “what does the portion control look like? How big are the items you’re purchasing?”

I mean, it’s one thing to whine about buying the 3-pack of popcorn and look at the 30-pack and see it as the better deal… but let’s face it: if you buy 6,000 calories worth of popcorn, you’re going to eat 6,000 calories of popcorn. It’s just a matter of “when.” And because you’ve purchased a much larger box of it… it starts to become easier and easier to convince yourself why it’s okay to dig in. If I’ve only got three packs, it’s highly unlikely that I’m going to make sense of eating a bag of popcorn each day. A 30 pack? Why, I can snack on a bag of popcorn each day of the month! (Or am I the only person who’s gone through this?)

Sometimes we think that because we see that price-per-ounce is smaller on the larger product, that we’re getting a better deal. And let’s be honest – in some cases, we are. That’s why I wrote about buying my beans, rices, spices and other staples in bulk. But those things that we think are big deals – the 25-pk of processed cookies/chips or the giant bottle of ketchup? Maybe not so much.

I think this is why shopping weekly with a pre-planned menu for your household has such a benefit to it. You know which condiments you’re going to need. You already know which “snacks” you’re going to want. You’re spending less each time you go to the grocery store, you’re buying only what you need, you’re making sure you moderate your portion sizes (because you’re taking portions out of smaller containers) and that means you’re taking that much more control over your intake. That’s a big deal.

To me, this is just another tiny tip to keep in mind when we shop. Stick to the staples when it comes to buying in bulk (or, if you are struggling with the staples, split them up into servings in little containers in advance) and leave the monster containers by the wayside. Your body just might thank you for it!

Other posts in the series:

• Save Money On Groceries: Buy It In Bulk
• Save Money On Groceries: Buy It In Season
• Save Money On Groceries: Go Weekly
• Save Money On Groceries: Buy The Private Label (Go Generic!)
• Save Money On Groceries: Go Frozen!
• Q&A Wednesday: The $50 Challenge
• Save Money on Groceries: Go… Smaller?
• Save Money On Groceries: The Readers Share Their Tips!

Save Money On Groceries: Go… Smaller? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Save Money On Groceries: Buy It In Bulk
2. Save Money On Groceries: Go Frozen!
3. Save Money On Groceries: Buy The Private Label (Go Generic!)

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

Get BGG2WL delivered wirelessly to your Kindle! Click here for more info!

© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: brian wansink, butter, carrots, clean eating, crushed red pepper, garlic, grocery shopping, pinto beans, saving money, spinach, squash, tomato

I’ve seen at least four articles about healthy living within the past week… where each article outlined “Ohhhh, well our grocery bill jumped by like 30%… but it’s sooooo worth it!” I’m not gon’ lie – if I were still 300lbs, looking at articles like that would turn me off from healthy eating. If I am told – repeatedly – that I cannot afford the life that’s going to make me healthier, why the hell would I go out of my way to go broke? Shoot, being thinner isn’t worth 30% more of my money! (Not saying that this should be the logic, but let’s not fool ourselves here. We wouldn’t dare trivialize our health that way… but “being thin” is disposable.)

The bottom line, really, is that when people are balking at the price of healthy eating…. they’re talking about the price of each individual item. It’s hard going from paying $2.00 for something like a TV dinner to paying $2.00 per pound for a head of well-grown broccoli. You start feeling like you’re getting less for your money.While I’ve already written about why cheap food is so cheap, I don’t think I’ve ever covered why well-grown fruits and veggies carry the price they do.

At Inc., I happened across an article detailing things restaurateurs should keep in mind if they’re considering opening an organic restaurant. As someone who worked in both a franchise restaurant as well as a locally-owned fine dining restaurant back in my undergrad days, I’ve always toyed with the idea of having my own spot…. but the reason I mention the article is because it has a section about “convincing non-believers.” Who are the “non-believers” that the article mentions? Those who question the purpose behind paying $2.00 per pound for a head of broccoli, when you can clearly buy a box of broccoli and “cheese” for a dollar.

Comedian Bill Maher often refers to the natural food retail giant Whole Foods as “whole paycheck” due to its expensive prices. His reference reflects a general perception that is often a reality for many people. The Organic Food Association cites the price of organic versus conventional can be anywhere from 15 to 100 percent higher. With that price difference, organic food can feel more like a luxury than a necessity. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) defines organic in the procedures that farmers grow and process food. Because these terms are more stringent than conventional farming the practices are much more labor intensive. Additionally, shunning the use of products like pesticides and synthetic growth hormones often results in lower product yield, which leads to smaller amounts of food that farmers can bring to market. The consequence of this supply and demand paradigm is the inevitable price hike of organic foods.

A 2009 study by the National Restaurant Association (NRA) cites that 76 percent of adults are trying to eat healthier at restaurants than they were just two years ago. That study was determined over several demographics signaling an overall shift in the dietary consciousness of Americans. The NRA completed another recent study in which sustainability, local sourcing and nutrition are cited as some of the most popular culinary themes.

Additionally, in wake of the recent egg recall, the OTA reports an increase in the sale and demand of organic eggs. Seemingly people are getting the message, the problem is whether the prices can remain static. There is an understanding amongst sectors of the public that organic prices will always be higher but there is a breaking point. As organic food prices continue to ascend, people may shy away from the marketplace.

“In the beginning a lot of people didn’t understand this kind of food and still there are concerns. People say things like they don’t understand why it was so expensive, you just serve vegetables,” says Melngailis. “People don’t know that when you use all organic ingredients that it’s not here, it’s not grown locally. So when we have to import something from Italy, these foods are hard to find and highly perishable and that makes it that much more expensive.  Not to mention the process of how we cook takes a long time.” [source]

So, in order to better understand organic (or, even, simply well-grown*) produce, what do you think needs to be explained? What questions do you have about well grown produce to make it clear that it’s worth the cost-per-item? Are you a believer? Are you a non-believer? Let’s hear it!

*What do I mean by well-grown? Some farms grow their produce by organic standards but cannot afford the organic certification, so they cannot call themselves organic. It doesn’t mean they love their produce any less, though!

Is Healthy Produce Really More Expensive? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Priced Out: Too Expensive to Buy Healthy?
2. Why Healthy Food Is So Expensive: The Price vs The Cost
3. Weekend WTF: Sadness In The Produce Section

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clean eating, price, saving money

Q: Hey girl, I love your blog and I subscribed to get them by email b/c I have an office job for 9 hours a day.  I was wondering if you could do a post with exercises that can be performed at the desk in the office during breaks or anytime. I am thinking you could use a water bottle, a towel, and your chair.

I love this question. Really, I do.

As a single parent, I was pretty limited in my resources as far as quality workout time. Sure, there’s a gym in my apartment complex that I could take my little one to, but there’s always that time frame in the year where everyone is in the gym. Having people trip over or run into her stroller… wasn’t working for me. My answer to this was simple: formulate a workout plan that I can execute at home, and if it didn’t require me to purchase any products, that’s even better. I’d imagine the limitations are similar at the office, with the added issue of limiting the amount of sweating going on. I was extremely successful using this kind of workout, so hopefully my little bit of insight can help.

I’ve written a little about this before, three of the ways that I really took advantage of what I had at home to get fit. However, in the spirit of this week’s “Ten More Minutes” challenge, how’s about I give you ten new exercises to get into right at your desk or in your office. Pack a lunch, close your office door, use ten minutes to get in these exercises and the other 20 (or 50, whatever you’ve got) to enjoy your lunch!

• Triceps: Dumbbell Kickbacks (uses a water bottle)
• Dumbbell Bicep Curl (uses a water bottle)
• Good Mornings (uses a broomstick or tall umbrella or a tightly-pulled towel)
• Steam Engines
• 8 Count Lunge and Squat
• The Superman
• Seated Calf Raise
• Vertical Jumping Jacks
• Standing Oblique Twists

Pick a couple to do each day and if you couple them with proper stretches afterwards, that’s a great way to make use of your ten minutes!

Q&A Wednesday: Doing It At The Desk is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Q&A Wednesday: Creating Your Weight Training Routine
2. Q&A Wednesday: Share Your Experiences With Video Game Fitness!
3. Q&A Wednesday: When Should I Start Lifting Weights?

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: exercises, saving money, workout at the office, workout tips

Having said that, I set out to buy my own berries and make my own jam. Is it pricier? It depends on your options. I was already buying jelly AND fresh blueberries (my daughter likes them in her cheerios) so for me, I saved money. Make the jam with my blueberries, and give her a small dollop of it in the center of her cereal. Not only that, but because my jam is made of actual food, my body doesn’t hunger for as much of it as I can slather onto the bread like it would with some commercial jams. Win on both counts.

Oh, and to the question of can you use frozen blueberries? This should answer that:

Not only do I use frozen, but I use generic. They were $3 on sale. Total win.

What will you need? Lemon juice, berries of choice, and sugar (). I’ve made blueberry, strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, cherry, apples… you name it, you can probably jam it. If you’re like me, you keep lemon juice in the house anyhow as a base for cooking (hint, hint). A $2 bottle goes a long way. As far as the sugar goes, the more organic, the better – not “sugar-in-the-raw”-organic, but organic as in organic cane sugar. I’m not going to even do this like most recipes, because it’s that simple.

Get yourself a nice saucepan. Not too much larger than your berries – you can see how much/how many I had in my pan. Pour about 1/4th of a cup of lemon juice into your skillet, and let it simmer on moderate heat. Dump your berries – assuming you have about 3-4 cups of berries – into your pot, and let it cook for about a half an hour. Keep checking on it to make sure you’re not frying your berries. Trust me, it’ll taste foul if you do.

You should see the berries juicing themselves – lots of gooey goodness oozing out and creating their own little sauce. Give it a good stir to make sure you’re not burning anything, and start mashing. You can use the back of a wooden spoon, a potato masher, the bottom of a glass, whatever – just start mashing.

You won’t get an even consistency like you might with a jar of jelly bought from the grocery because – remember – there’s no actual fruit in there. It’ll be lumpy. It might even taste tart at first because of the lemon juice, but that’s ok. You still have to add the sugar. Once your berries are good and mashed to your liking, grab your sugar and get to work.

Add the sugar 1/4th of a cup at a time, stirring and tasting after every addition. I don’t like mine too sweet, because it reminds me of “grape” jelly and makes me nauseous, so I never need more than a third of a cup of sugar. Not only that, but knowing what I’m putting in my jelly, I don’t want to have to eat those calories and then be responsible for burning those calories. (This is why picking nice flavorful berries is important. Enjoy the flavor of the fruit – don’t overdo it on the sugar.)

If you’re feeling jazzy, there are a few finishing touches you can add. I dropped a scoop of flaxseed in my raspberry jelly. I took my blackberry jam and made a nice vinaigrette with it. With my apple jam, I added cloves and nutmeg to it. Get yourself a nice jar, and pour your finished jam into it. Give it some time to cool down, then refridgerate it.. and you’re done!

Save Calories AND Money: Make Your Own Jams and Jellies is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Save Money On Groceries: Buy It In Bulk
2. Save Money On Groceries: Go Frozen!
3. Save Money On Groceries: Go… Smaller?

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

Get BGG2WL delivered wirelessly to your Kindle! Click here for more info!

© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 19 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: high fructose corn syrup, Recipes, saving money

You heard right. This is my “Sexy Ranch” dressing.

I heard you askin’ already – why is it Sexy Ranch?!

Here’s why:

My ranch is sexy because this ranch… is not.

16tbsp = 1 cup. I paid about $2.50 for 1 cup of ranch dressing in a funny shaped supaskinny bottle with semi-modern package design.

Inside that $2.50 cup of ranch dressing, I get 16 tablespoons of dressing, with each tablespoon giving me 140 calories.

Inside that $2.50 cup of ranch dressing, I get ingredients like phosphoric acid, natamycin, disodium guanylate, and xanthan gum. Yeah. If you can tell me what any of that is, that’d be great.

I snatched up some stuff from my kitchen that definitely cost more than $2.50 altogether. I snatched up things like:

1/3 teaspoon of sea salt (maybe even less.. just a pinch worked for mine)

about 1/3 cup of parsley

2 tablespoons of finely chopped green onions (chopped however finely you’d prefer it in your dressing)

1/3 teaspoon of black pepper

1 cup of real mayonnaise (do us BOTH a favor and don’t use Miracle Whip) (~700 calories)

buttermilk (I used about 2 cups, you may use more or less) (about 100 calories per cup)

2 teaspoons of minced garlic

1 teaspoon of cream cheese (~10 calories)

1 tablespoon of finely chopped onion

I tossed everything in the bowl, except the buttermilk. Go on and mix that all up. Give it a taste and see how you like it.

Then, go ahead and pour in your buttermilk, one cup at a time. Stir it after each cup, and give it a little pinky-taste-test. You know, put a dollop on your pinky and taste it to see what kind of taste it leaves on your tongue. Add the second cup. At this point, decide whether or not you want it thinner (and if so, add more buttermilk.)

Want it more tangy? Go with squeezing a liiittle lemon over it. Want it spicy? Hit up the paprika and cayenne pepper. Want somethin’ different? Add a little flax seed to it, or grab the chili powder. Make this YOUR recipe. YOU are the one that has to enjoy it, and you need to convince yourself that this is the safer option for your ranch fetish. Is time an issue? Tell yourself that the only way you can enjoy ranch dressing is if you make it yourself.

I recommend making sure you have extra ingredients left over just so that you can personalize the recipe the way you want. Ranch is, essentially, about throwing the whole farm in the pot and putting it the way you like it – I put a little paprika in mine, I squeeze a little lime over mine… might even put a little lime zest (lime shavings) on top and stir it in.  Try anything – try everything! Make use of your kitchen. I can assure you, it’s totally fun… and takes all of 15 minutes. Grab a squeeze bottle from your nearest dollar store or grocery (or dump out your old ranch and rinse the bottle, LOL), and pow – you’re all set!

Now.. let’s compare. Even if you had to BUY all the ingredients for my ranch, you can still use them in other dishes. I had everything in my home already. It’s not a total loss on the investment.

I used 2 cups of buttermilk. This gave me a little more than 3 cups of ranch dressing. Let’s do the math:

3 cups of dressing = 700(calories from the mayo) + 200(calories from 2 cups of buttermilk) + 10(calories from the cream cheese)

Kraft’s 1 cup of dressing totals 2240 calories. 2080 of which are from fat.

My 3 cups of ranch total 910 calories. Putting it on par with the Kraft, that means that for every 1 cup, my dressing gives you about 303 calories. I didn’t calculate fat calories, but I can assure you it’s much less than 2080.

303…is much less than 2240. Seriously.

My ranch is Sexy Ranch because it’s not gonna prevent you from preserving your sexy. I’m serious.

Best of luck, and don’t forget to tell me how it turns out!

Make It At Home: Sexy Ranch Dressing is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Weekend WTF: I’m Too Sexy For This Ham
2. Q&A Wednesday: Exercise Won’t Make You Thin?
3. Q&A Wednesday: I’m Not Gonna Make It Through Labor Day!

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: saving money

My new-found love of mustard... yum.

For me, the hardest thing to do was giving up some of my favorite vices. I loved mayo. Looooved fruit punch. Loooooooved ice cream floats. I’m just not someone who likes the idea of giving up what I’d considered staples in my diet – yes, mayo was a staple… I even enjoyed a little turkey with my mayo sandwich – for any reason, until… I found something better.

I think that’s a key aspect of giving up bad habits – finding something delicious to replace it with, that has the added bonus of being good for us, as well. Granted, not everyone will face the task of full on giving something up… but I know my strengths, and I pay attention to my weaknesses. I know that some things compel me to ignore the concept of “moderation” either out of habit or simply because it may be what my tongue wants at that time. Sometimes, I’d rather skip them altogether than risk overdoing it in the name of “learning moderation.”

So having said that, here are a few of my swaps that make life that much easier for me, and prevent me from running back to my own bad habits:

Mayonnaise/”Salad Dressing”: Depending on your brand, it might be that sweet stuff that is something like a billion calories of nothing but oil and egg and cream and high fructose corn syrup. I gave up my mayo, and replaced it with different variations of mustard. Yes, mustard! Honey mustard, dijon mustard, regular mustard… you name it, I’ve got it. I use it on salads, on sandwiches, even in my marinades. The average tablespoon of mustard is about 10 calories anyhow and with such a kick to it, a little goes a long way.

Croutons: I always laugh a little bit when I look at the serving sizes for croutons, because they’re so impractical. The serving size is always something awkward like, “2 tablespoons or 3 grams.” Who measures croutons in tablespoons? And what’s more, croutons peek out from above the top of the tablespoon.. so does the calorie count only include the parts of the croutons that’s actually within the spoon or does it also include the bread that’s peeking out of the top? I don’t like things that are difficult to measure – that makes it more difficult to understand and gauge what it’s doing to my body – so I gave up the croutons, and replaced them with panko bread crumbs. Their size allows for you to measure them properly, a half of a cup is 100 calories (so two tablespoons is closer to 25 calories), and they’re crunchy enough to provide nice texture to your salads. Win.

Fruit juice: I can admit it. Three years of dorm life left me with a sad love of, um, “fruit punch.” It’s not “fruit juice,” because it’s not the “juice of a fruit.” It’s “fruit punch” because… well, no one knows why. There’s no nutritional value to this stuff because it’s little more than chemical flavorings, sugar and water. But how can you make your own fruit punch? Grab some tea bags, squeeze in some orange juice, throw in some raspberries and peaches and mangoes (I sometimes use frozen when I need to be cheap), and then drop in your orange and lemon halves! Ta-da – not only is it beautiful to look at, but once you get the flavor perfect for your tongue, you will be much happier with your choice.

Root beer floats: I didn’t even like root beer like that, but paired up with ice cream? Aw, snap. What I do now is actually pretty extensive, but ice cream is not a regularity at all for me – maybe once every few months – so I treat it like it’s special. I dice up a few apples, toss ‘em in a pot. Pour in some cranberries, a tablespoon of sugar, and about a half cup of red wine (I always keep a cheap bottle of wine handy to use while cooking, anyhow.) Let it cook on moderate heat (maybe a 7 out of ten), and then mash it up with a potato masher (or chop it up with a knife, same point). It doesn’t have to look like mashed potatoes, but it shouldn’t look like fresh apples, either. Once I’ve finished dinner, I’ll pour my ice cream in a glass, top it with my apples and cranberries and maybe pour a little sparkling water over the top. Yes, I treat it like real dessert – I cook it while I cook dinner.

I know, I know… no one wants to go through all of that work. Cooking fruits, squeezing oranges, but the point of all this is two-fold: 1) become so excited by the good stuff (that you can make for cheap), that you no longer want the cheap and unhealthy stuff as much, and 2) know that because it’s so much work, you can’t eat it as much, therefore you don’t eat it as much. Besides, even if you don’t need to give up these things, you’ll at least see how to flip something into an opportunity to experiment and create something new. See how that works?

What swaps have you made to live healthier and happier? What swaps would you like to make? Who knows? Maybe we can make a new “day” – “Friday Swap?” Let’s hear ‘em!

Four Easy Swaps To Cut Calories is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. How Many Calories Are You Drinking?
2. Where Do Americans Get Their Calories?
3. Q&A Wednesday: I’m Not Getting Enough Calories!

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 22 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: apples, clean eating, cranberries, croutons, fruit punch, Healthy Eating, high fructose corn syrup, ice cream, ice cream floats, mayonnaise, mustard, oranges, panko bread crumbs, peaches, Recipes, root beer floats, saving money

NASA Celebrates the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day

I know this is a pretty idealistic concept, and we all might like to give lip service to living eco-friendly lives… but who has time for all that? It’s hard enough for most-if-not-all of us to get this healthy eating thing down pat. Now, we’ve got to protect the Earth, too?

It doesn’t take much effort. In fact, being eco-friendly and clean eating go hand in hand and both can be managed by the busy lifestyler. Here are a few ways to live a little cleaner, a little greener, without costing you a ton of time each day.

"Processed cheese product"... in a jar. How.. innovative?

Ditching the Processed Products

Obviously, this is the largest factor in clean eating. Pardon me for getting a little preachy, but I see it like this – our connection to the Earth is symbiotic. We cultivate the Earth with our activity, and in return it promotes the growth of humanity. So… we have to be mindful of what we put out there. Ditching the boxed and canned foods, essentially, means less trash… going to less landfills… less air and land pollution.

But if I give up foods, how do I replace them?

Buy fresh veggies. Only buy what you believe you will cook that week. This way, you not only spend much less, but you don’t leave anything sitting and risk your food rotting. You can learn to cook the same veggie three different ways, and get more creative with your cooking style. You also don’t run into the problem of additional preservatives or salts used to preserve the shelf life of your food.

I buy things like onions and peppers knowing that I don’t want red peppers or onions every day… so I’ll take them, chop them up in the ways that I know I usually eat them, and freeze them that way. So I’ll have a bag of onions chopped in rings, a bag diced in squares and a bag cut in strips. I’ll have a bag of red peppers chopped in strips and another bag diced in chunks. I do the same with mushrooms, cucumbers, celery, carrots, spinach (the spinach I use to cook, not the ones I use for salad) and bean sprouts. I cannot tell you how much time this saves me, and it takes me a half hour. Tops.

My carrots, squash, broccoli and corn/okra/pepper blend, preparing for the freezer.

Buy frozen. Generic store-brand frozen veggies are a dollar a bag (rarely more than $2.50) and can last forever. Carrots, broccoli, string beans, onions, peppers, different veggie blends (I bought a 5lb bag of carrot/broccoli/cauliflower for $3… lasted forever) all at your fingertips, and only requiring a little steaming, baking, boiling or sauteeing.

I keep a combination of both in my fridge. I keep fresh broccoli in the fridge for salads, and frozen in the freezer for cooking.. and I never intermingle the two. I don’t cook with my fresh, and I don’t thaw my frozen for salads.

Try to find a local butcher. No plastic-wrapped chicken, no pre-packaged beef patties. You get an awesome guy (or girl) with a vast knowledge of meat, who can offer you suggestions and steps on how to prepare and preserve your meats. A wonderful butcher will never be reluctant to offer you suggestions. He wants your business.

Make your own junk food. That’s right – no matter how many green velvet cupcakes you make, I promise you the calorie count wouldn’t scrape the surface of what it is when you buy boxed cupcake mix. Seriously.

Practicing what I preach... there's my wild rice, right there!

Make your freezer your best friend. Things like wild rice, brown rice… stuff that takes forever to cook? I cook it all in one giant pot, divvy it up into individual servings, put them in ziploc bags (which I reuse), and freeze them. That way, I have my own microwaveable rice bags without all the extra salt and preservatives… and I’m saving money.

Get Your Sugar From The Earth

Meaning.. if you need sugar, go for a fruit - something that came directly from the Earth. Skip the soft drinks, fruit juices and candies. I write enough about this for folks to know how I feel about these, since all three contain high fructose corn syrup. Aside from the fact that the stuff expands your waistline like nobody’s business, it’s a direct factor in causing and inflaming type 2 diabetes. If you drink a soda, there is nothing in that but sugar, salt and carbonation. Fruits have vitamins, minerals – the stuff of life – and, well, sugar. You can’t eat fruits, in their sugary splendor, in abundance because those nutrients in them will fill you up faster than a coke can. You’re not taking in empty calories. Even though you should be moderate in your fruit consumption, you’d do better to have an orange than a coke.

It’s cheaper, too.

Drink water.

And no, I don’t mean Fiji, Aquafina, or whatever. Get yourself a nice, attractive reusable container to carry with you throughout the day, and keep refilling it. Skip the water bottles that go… in a landfill, buried where trees – or people – could live, instead. If you’re having a hard time with the taste of water, squeeze a lemon/lime/orange/strawberry or whatever in it. Freeze some grapes, use ‘em as ice cubes at home. Buy some frozen blueberries, use those. Slice up a cucumber, drop it in there. I mean, outside of being super cute and attractive looking at a table, the stuff actually adds a nice little refreshing taste to water.

Purchase a 2.5gal jug – if you must – from your local grocery. Way less plastic than the 24pk of bottles, much less trash than the regular gallon jugs, and can fit in your fridge and last a while. I drink a little over a gallon of water a day (which means yes, I don’t drink much else besides water and my evening tea) because it keeps my skin looking a lovely healthy shade of chocolatey brown.

Reduce Your Portion Sizes

Measuring cups may not be so necessary after all!

Slow down. This means that you can’t eat standing up anymore. No, you can’t eat out of the pan anymore. No, you can’t eat in front of the TV. No, you can’t sit all the food on the table and you just pass around the pans. Relax. Take the time to enjoy your dinner companions, be they friends, family, whomever. Don’t put food in between you. Leave the food in the kitchen. Eat slower. Talk to one another. You’ll find that you not only eat less and still feel full, but you will have actually enjoyed your time together at the table. That is what it means to enjoy food. Not the feeling you get from the food, but from the company you’ve kept while you ate.

Pack your lunch. Not only do you save money… not only do you create less waste… but you save calories as well. Buy yourself an attractive (I keep wanting to say cute, but I know several fellas who are taking the challenge, too) lunch pail and stock it with your favorite snacks. Your body will thank you for it.

These things all help you save time as well as money, and benefit the Earth. The goal is to reduce our carbon footprint as much as possible, and each of these tips gets us one step closer. It takes planning and preparation, but that’s why we’re discussing the challenge the week before we begin! Spend a little time today – Earth Day – and take at least one of these suggestions to heart. Every single step and every little effort counts. I promise!

Have any additional ideas? Let’s hear ‘em!

Fitting Clean Eating Into A Busy Life is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Q&A Wednesday: Is Clean Eating An Eating Disorder?
2. Q&A Wednesday Clean Eating Style
3. Now That I’m Clean Eating, What Can I Cook?

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 14 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clean eating, earth day, ecofriendly, grocery shopping, high fructose corn syrup, portion control, processed foods, saving money, vegetables, water

Well, I’ll do my best to share what grocery shopping with me looks like, and how my little one and I are able to manage.

First, I hit up the frozen veggie section. Here, I pick up frozen onions, pepper blends, green beans, cauliflower, carrots, broccoli and mushrooms. At a dollar a piece, they total $7.

Then, I pick up some whole wheat tortillas. $3.64. Don’t worry.. I cringed a little.

I head on over to the deli, and pick up some Havarti cheese. I don’t get much – I don’t eat much of it, and only use it on the occasional lunch sandwich – and it costs me $2.29.

I’ll then grab some sliced chicken breast for sandwiches, and to sprinkle on some of my salads. Costs me $4.99.

I also grab some chicken cuts on sale, $4.21.

The giant box of Cheerios? $4.09.

Simply Lemonade, $2.85.

A head of cabbage, at $0.59/lb runs me $1.75.

The organic apples are on sale, $2.49 a bag. I grab one, ’cause I can make apple butter, applesauce and give the baby her daily apple to snack on.

One red bell pepper is $1.99, so I grab one. I’ll cut it up into thin strips, store it in a ziploc bag and when I want ‘em on salads I’ll grab a few strips, cut it up into chunks, and toss ‘em right in. Remember, I bought frozen peppers for a dollar. As I couldn’t use those in my salads, it makes sense to me to buy one regular pepper for quick eating and use the frozen ones for cooking.

The pasilla (basically, chilies) were $3/lb, so I only got a handful. I wanted to make a bottle of hot sauce, so my chilies cost me $0.78.

My green beans, that I only bought because they were on sale, cost me $0.95 at $0.50/lb.

Two pounds of red potatoes at $0.99/lb, cost me $1.90.

Avocado season, thank goodness, brought the price of avocados down to a dollar a piece, so I got four. I use them for salad dressing and the occasional guacamole, so for $4, that’s a deal.

Two bushels of green onions, at $0.54 a piece, cost $1.08.

Radishes? Why not. They’re $1.29.

Cucumbers, two cost me $1.58.

A handful of yellow chilies – again for my hot sauce – $0.31.

A head of romaine lettuce cost me $2.49.

I’m sick and tired of cutting my fingers off dealing with artichokes, so I bought a jar of ‘em for $2.98. Since ONE artichoke runs me about $3 right now, this works out.

Also bought a jar of roasted red peppers, because I want to make another jar of salad dressing. (Obviously, I have a giant bottle of olive oil and another bottle of vinegar at home.) $2.65.

A loaf of wheat bread, $1.89.

And lastly, strawberries were on sale for $2.50 a piece, so I bought two: $5. This means strawberry pancakes, strawberry jam, strawberry spread, and frozen strawberry jam to store away for the winter. (Yes, winter. Gotta stay prepared!)

This is enough to cover three meals a day for a toddler and five meals a day for myself, seven days a week… only one of us bringing in any income (that is, unless I can figure out how to get the 3 year old to start bringing in the turkey bacon.) We only eat at restaurants once every six or so weeks. Altogether, it was about 35 items and cost me $62.20. For me, that’s a little high, but I want to start stocking up on strawberries now and felt like havarti that day. Sue me.

Next week, it may not be Cheerios, it might be my rices – that I buy in bulk – for $2/lb. It won’t be chilies, green onions, artichokes, red peppers or those same frozen veggies. It might just be oatmeal, black beans, cashews, tomatoes and more avocados. Either way, I’ve never spent more than $70 in one week on groceries, and I’d like to keep it that way!

How much are you spending on groceries? What tricks do you use to save a little money here or there?

Take A Peek Inside My Grocery List is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Video Vault: Inside A Lab That Creates Chemical Flavorings
2. How Does A Farmer’s Market Accept Credit, Debit or EBT Cards? Info Inside!
3. The Monstrous List of Every Superfood Ever… EVER!!!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 30 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clean eating, grocery shopping, Healthy Eating, saving money

No, really. I’m not the girlfriend at the table who whips out the calculator when we’re all out dining together (you know who I’m talking about) but I am the one who has a close eye on all the sales, will frustrate the cashier at the store with a handful of coupons and has no problem “negotiating” down the price on a product… regardless of how long it takes or who it holds up.

I look at it like this – I save where I can, so I can spend where I need.

So, when I first learned about eating healthy and “organic foods,” you can imagine the sticker shock I endured when I first saw those price tags. No, really. I was pretty pissed. At first, I truly didn’t understand it. What justifies adding an extra dollar and some change to the per pound weight of spinach just because it’s organic?

Then…I did some digging.

On this site, I talk a lot about the harmful chemicals inside of our processed food items, how poorly our bodies digest them, and how they negatively impact our health (and, ultimately, our weight.) There are chemicals in our food that alter our thought patterns, chemicals that make us think one thing is truly another and chemicals that, without question, are actually used harmfully (even fatally) in other contexts. Why would our fruits and vegetables be any different?

So, you think about your fruits and veggies…growing in some far away garden on some faraway farmland. You don’t think about the bugs that those farmers and gardeners have to fend off, though. That’s why farmers use pesticides. It keeps the bugs at bay with minimal effort for the farmer. There’s nothing wrong with that in principle, but the fact remains that many of these pesticides are considered to be a little suspect in not only their effects on the environment they’re sprayed on, but our bodies as well.

Look at it this way – sure, pesticides may be an important part of keeping bugs off our food, but what do those chemicals do once they hit the ground? What happens when they seep into the soil and wind up elsewhere? If we’re still not 1000% sure (and by that I mean sure without a doubt) about these chemicals, why support their use? That’s where buying organic comes in.

To purchase something as organic means that it is certified t have not used pesticides or other harmful chemicals in the growing of that product. This is great, but… is it always necessary? Do I have to buy everything organic?

No!

If you are a budding die hard environmentalist, you may decide that you don’t want any of your money encouraging the use of pesticides, and that’s okay. For others, the goal may be to merely get their feet wet in the world of organics and make a small leap instead of diving head first.

Realistically speaking, I prefer it this way. I didn’t dive head first into organics. I only bought a few things here and there. The more I started cutting out other crap in my diet, the more room my budget had to purchase other things. That’s okay. Baby steps.

So what things should you buy organic, and what can you bypass? For me, there are three simple rules of thumb you can apply across the board in regard to what should and shouldn’t be bought organic if you’re seeking to avoid pesticides. Have at ‘em:

The harder the skin, the safer the insides – it’s as simple as this. The outside of the plant is sprayed. If the skin is hardened – think pineapple, lemon, lime, avocado, and mango – it’ll be easier to protect the part of the fruit that you actually eat.

If it says organic on a box, reconsider your purchase – buying organic fruits and veggies is one thing, but buying organic processed foods? Not only are you going to pay a premium for it, you’re still buying a processed food! Having “organic” stamped on the side doesn’t automatically erase the issues that come with processed foods, it doesn’t automatically make the food healthier and it certainly doesn’t take away the “junk food” label. Oh, yes. There is organic junk food. “Organic” doesn’t mean “healthy.” It means “no pesticides, not a clone food.” It’s not a free pass.

Besides, there’s also this:

Products made entirely with certified organic ingredients and methods can be labeled “100% organic”. Products with at least 95% organic ingredients can use the word “organic”. Both of these categories may also display the USDA organic seal. A third category, containing a minimum of 70% organic ingredients, can be labeled “made with organic ingredients”. In addition, products may also display the logo of the certification body that approved them. Products made with less than 70% organic ingredients cannot advertise this information to consumers and can only mention this fact in the product’s ingredient statement. [source]

The more exposed the edible parts of the food, the more important it is to go organic – just like the first rule was pretty easy to understand, this one is the same. Think berries, apples, peaches, grapes, pears, cucumbers, leafy greens. I’ll never forget the day that I bit into a cucumber that I just cleaned, and my tongue went numb. No, thank you. If you’re cringing at the thought of buying your favorite foods at a higher price, do yourself a favor and buy them in-season. They’re cheaper, then.

Now, there are other elements to buying organics – I didn’t even mention clone foods, animal or animal by-products, here, but just you wait – but as far as pesticides on fruits and veggies goes, this is a great start for a beginner who wants to try.

Want some more resources? Greenopolis has a pretty clear list of what you can get away with purchasing while escaping the organic sticker shock, as well as explanations that can help you better understand the thought process behind your purchases. The Environmental Working Group also has a list of fruits and veggies ranked from best to worst as far as what can be purchased without the organic label. And if you can swallow even more hippie talk, Focus Organic has a list of effects that purchasing organic has on the world around us.

One final point – if you’re purchasing from a farmer’s market and worried about the “organic” label, don’t hesitate to ask the farmer about their pesticide use, yourself. Some farms cannot afford the “organic” certification, and others simply don’t bother. If your family has been farming the same way for 75 years, it’s highly unlikely that you’d feel like you needed a stamp to validate what you’d been doing long before the organic stamp existed, too.

Remember, purchasing organic isn’t a requirement, but it is certainly a “something extra” that those who can, should definitely consider. It’s one step closer to getting as close to the source as possible. It’s cutting out another middle man. You don’t have to, but when you do, you can taste it!

Which foods do you make sure to purchase organic? What tips do you use to clean your inorganic foods? What tips do you have to share for someone getting their feet wet? Let’s hear it!

Pesticides: When Organic Matters (Or Doesn’t) is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Organic …Pesticides?

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clean eating, fruits, grocery shopping, Healthy Eating, inorganic, nutrition, organic, pesticides, saving money, vegetables

While I was working toward making my mashed sweet potatoes (one of MANY dishes I was about to enjoy from my phenomenal amount of sweet potatoes I got), I opted to cut my recipe short and veer off into another direction – sweet potato spread! If I can do it with apples and blueberries, why not sweet potatoes? It’s uncommon, but on the right crackers and breads (or pancakes… or waffles… or even ice cream…), it’s a wonderful little addition. My daughter adores this, so I figured you might find a use for it.

First, let me laugh a little – I’m not a photographer at all. I have an awesome camera, but I have no idea how to work it.. so I snap these shots with my cell phone. Stop laughing.

• 2 sweet potatoes
• 1/8th teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/8th teaspoon cloves
• 1/8th teaspoon allspice
• 1/4th cup brown sugar

Chop up your sweet potatoes into nice big chunks. Don’t worry about skinning it. Also, don’t use a bread knife. Knife almost took some of my fingers.

Toss your chunks into a nice sized pot full of water. Just enough water to cover your potato chunks.

After about 20 minutes, start checking your potatoes. Some people microwave ‘em instead of boiling. I can’t vouch for that method because I avoid my microwave, but I’m not against it.

Drain your pot, let the sweet potatoes cool, then take your chunks one by one to pinch off the skin. A simple pinching motion should do well to get rid of it.

All of your skinned chunks should be soft and in a bowl together, now. Take a potato masher, and get to work!

After enough work, drop in your spices – feel free to add a little cinnamon if you choose – and stir it up with a good wooden spoon. Then, grab your brown sugar and slowly start pouring it in. After about a quarter of your brown sugar, taste it a little.. gauge what you’re going for, here. At this point, you can go where you want with it. Make it taste more like sweet potato pie, add more cloves, whatever you desire. I made mine a little tangy by adding some molasses to it (just a tablespoon), and my little one adores it.

I keep extra jars in the house, so I just tossed this in a jar and ta-da!

Spread it on some water crackers for a nice snack! I don’t like it spread on wheat bread too well (at least with the kind I buy.. tastes like true-to-life cardboard to me) so the water crackers is my favorite bet. Enjoy!

Sweet Potato Butter is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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1. Weekend WTF: I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!
2. Another Peanut Butter Recall: Why Does This Keep Happening?

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Recipes, saving money

So, my little one and I spent a good amount of time at home. Sad that I couldn’t use the gym equipment – and unwilling to spend money (in a recession, no less) on my own – I had to come up with an effective manner of getting in my exercise. My desire to not spend money on getting fit had only a little to do with the fact that I’m cheap (painfully cheap.) It had much more to do with the fact that I needed to know that the effort I was putting forth wouldn’t be dependent upon how much money I could spend to get it. I needed to know that my business could fail, I could go broke and poor and be homeless living with a friend and that I’d still be able to maintain my health on my own. That I could innovate ways to get it done, and that I was devoted enough to my cause to continue to innovate.

After enough reading and research, I got it. Meet… my dumbell.

Oh, and I’m serious. Two gallon jugs that I could control how many cups are in them? Yes.

Look at it this way – a gallon of water weighs approximately 8lbs. There are 16 cups in a gallon of water. In theory, each cup weighs half a pound. If I pour 10 cups of water in each jug, I have two five pound weights at home to use. Simple as that. Obviously, you might not want that water sloshing around back and forth (if you did, you’d simply have an effective homemade Shake Weight) so feel free to use smaller containers, so long as you can maintain a good grip on it.

I also built a routine around calisthenics. Calisthenics are, in few words, exercises that consist of a series of movements that basically use the body’s weight against itself in order to build muscle. Think squats, push ups, jumping jacks, lunges. While you may not be able to increase the amount of weight (and actually hope that it decreases), you can increase the number of exercises you do and use different variations of the same exercise.

For example – I went from regular lunges to walking lunges. Yowzers. I went from squats to plié squats to frog hops. Double yowzers. I went from doing my push-ups against a wall to doing them with my feet on the floor and hands on a chair to finally doing them on the floor. See? It’s all about time, patience and progress.You’ll know when it starts to feel too easy, and you’ll want more.. or different.. or more challenging.

My last method of infusing my in-house day with exercise? Tabatas.

[begin superhero music]

Tabatas are a four minute long method of interval training. 20 seconds of going as hard as you can, followed by 10 seconds of rest. A cycle repeated with 4 different exercises – totaling 2 minutes – and then your entire 2 minute routine repeated twice. This is great for early morning just-woke-up activity, or “Dang, I missed the gym, let me at least get in a little something” night time activity.

So, for example, on leg day – I’d do those hammer curls with my jug as hard and fast as I could (while trying to maintain my form) for 20 seconds, then rest for ten seconds. Then, I’d switch to my walking lunges for 20 seconds, then rest for ten seconds. Then I’d hit my leg swings for 20 seconds, then rest for ten seconds. Then? Tricep dips for 20 seconds, then rest. Finally, I’d repeat the entire sequence… feeling like I got beat down in the end.

Between tabatas, calisthenics and my gallon jug dumbbells, I was able to get my exercise in at home when I couldn’t get to the gym with the little one. Hopefully, they’ll give you a few options in how to expand your at-home workout, too.

Three Great Ways To Exercise At Home is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Great Hair or Great Body? Straight Hair and Working Out
2. 5 Things You Should Know About Becoming A Great Cook
3. Q&A Wednesday: Exercise Won’t Make You Thin?

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: exercises, saving money, workout at home, workout routine, workout tips

Regardless of which one you choose, they’re all wrong to me. Hey, I’m just keepin’ it real.

It’s hard enough to eat clean – buying mainly produce and deli – without breaking the bank. If you grocery shop for clean eating every other night, what are you leaving to rot and waste at home? (And for crying out loud, how much gas are you wasting?) If you’re buying cooked dinners from the deli in the grocery, how much money are you spending per plate per night? (And for goodness sake, how much trash are you accumulating?)

And if you’re going grocery shopping every two weeks, I’m almost certain that you’re buying an influx of processed foods. What else is going to keep that well for two weeks without eventually beginning to wilt? (And as I previously outlined, just how much money are you wasting buying pre-prepared foods, instead of ingredients to create your own good stuff?)

I’m sayin’. There has to be a sensible solution, right? Right?

Right! My answer is to pick one day – usually a nice, lazy, comfy Sunday – and go grocery shopping. Wake up that morning, spend a good 15 minutes thinking about what you’ll eat this week, what you’ll need, sketch out a list, scratch out the [processed foods and] stuff you’ve already got plenty of in your fridge already and get moving!

Why weekly?

For starters, it allows you to avoid your produce rotting. If you dedicate one day to grocery shopping and food prep, you can spend the rest of the week cooking from your fridge, your cabinets and your pantry. It allows you to “shop” from your own reserves. This way, you prevent wasting your money on stuff you “can’t eat” because it doesn’t look quite as fresh as it did when you got it.

Secondly, you have to make a list. How is it that we go grocery shopping, spend an arm/a leg/a first born and still… wind up staring at the fridge for five minutes repeating to ourselves, “I have nothing to cook.” Oh, no. Not only do you have plenty of ingredients and not pre-prepared foods that you may or may not have a taste for – for example, instead of buying garlic cheese bread in a box, why not pick up a baguette from the grocery bakery, some garlic powder, cheese and use your butter/oil? – but you have options. A pre-packaged box doesn’t give you options. At all. Ever. That same garlic powder, cheese and oil could be used on bread, macaroni, leafy greens and rice. Options.

Shopping this way forces you to think about exactly what you’re going to realistically eat in a week. For example – I know I’ll need a big container of oatmeal and various types of fruit for breakfast. I know I’ll need bread, peanut butter, apples, strawberries and bananas for lunch. I also know I’ll need lots of rice, veggies/veggie blends, leafy greens, herbs, spices and the like for dinner. In my head, when I do this planning, I’m sketching out my week. I’ll even have a few magazines or good recipe websites on hand to look at what I can accomplish with my potential ingredient list.

Lastly, it re-emphasizes portion control. If you know you’re only going through that whole ordeal one time and you’re adamant about not breaking your rule (and your rule is imposed by someone worth respecting – yourself), then you’ll exercise portion control to ensure that you don’t break your promise to yourself.

For those of you who only go grocery shopping 2x a month, why not split up what you usually purchase and put the other half “under the mattress?” If you’re afraid of that money “turning into shoe money,” then I can’t help ya. Exercise a little restraint. That’s grocery money… not “free money.”

Get into the habit of eating what’s in your house, and stop letting commercials and cravings run you. I’ll never forget the day my Sorority sister and I went grocery shopping together. With all those groceries in the car, I said to her, “You wanna go to Checkers/Rally’s? I’m starving.” She surely did look at me like I had a booger on my face and said, “Didn’t we just go to the grocery store? Any particular reason why you aren’t hungry for what you just bought?”

That’s not exactly what she said. I think I cleaned it up a little bit.

Not like it wasn’t bad enough that just the sight and smell of the fast food joint made me wanna levitate out of the car and into the Checkers’ drive-thru to inhale some fries, but I would’ve easily spent $6 there. $6 is a week and a half worth of frozen veggies! Y’all playin’!

My daughter and I get up early Sunday morning, have breakfast, then hit the grocery stores together. Aside from the occasional hand-swatting (“No, you better not reach for the Booberry… and unless you have a job, you can’t get it.“) and begging for samples, we make it fun. We get home, I do my prep work of chopping and sorting the veggies, and that’s it for the week. It’s literally like making my own “pre-prepared foods.” Give it a shot and see how it works for you!

Other posts in the series:

• Save Money On Groceries: Buy It In Bulk
• Save Money On Groceries: Buy It In Season
• Save Money On Groceries: Go Weekly
• Save Money On Groceries: Buy The Private Label (Go Generic!)
• Save Money On Groceries: Go Frozen!
• Q&A Wednesday: The $50 Challenge
• Save Money on Groceries: Go… Smaller?
• Save Money On Groceries: The Readers Share Their Tips!

Saving Money On Groceries: Go Weekly! is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Saving Money On Groceries: Buy It In Season
2. Save Money On Groceries: Buy It In Bulk
3. Save Money On Groceries: Go… Smaller?

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

Get BGG2WL delivered wirelessly to your Kindle! Click here for more info!

© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clean eating, Fast Food, grocery shopping, processed foods, produce, saving money, shopping list

It’s hard to accept that cheap food has consequences. It’s also sometimes hard to accept that cheap food is cheap because, to save the companies from passing the cost onto you, the good stuff has been stripped out. Good stuff. You know, the vitamins, minerals, nutrients… the stuff that keeps you thriving.

All that aside, it’s hard to jump head first into clean eating. All you really know is “no boxes, no bags, no cans, no bottled water, bon appetit!” Before you know it, you’ve spent $200 on fruits and vegetables that began to rot before you could even taste them all, and you start longing for the days when you could buy food with an expiration date of… next year.

Below, I have five guesses as to why you may be spending too much on learning how to eat clean. I know these are true… because they are exactly how I screwed up in the beginning.

1. You’re indulging too often. If you’ve made the attempt to swap out your doritos for chocolate covered cashews, and that means that you eat your chocolate covered cashews just as often as you ate your doritos – which means… you’re eating them every day – then yes, you’re overdoing it and you’re going to feel it in your wallet. The point of an indulgence is to treat yourself. It is a highly American principle (read: result of marketing) that it makes sense to “treat yourself every day”… especially with food. If you’re going to treat yourself every day, let it be with a nice hot bubble bath, a longer walk than normal or sitting out to watch the sun set. I know the last one is corny, but my daughter and I walk and watch the sun setting together like there’s fireworks out there. We appreciate simple. Simple is also free.

We really appreciate free.

My indulgence? Vegan organic dark chocolate truffles. $5 for a box of two, and worth every chocolatey bite. Know how often I get them? Once a week (if that.) My indulgence expenses for the week? Five dollars. Certainly not $3.50 every two days like it might be for those chocolate covered cashews.

Please note that people who suffer from this problem also often complain about “doing everything right and still not losing weight.”

2. You’re buying out of season. In the fall, I can buy sweet potatoes for $0.29 per pound. That’s right. I can get three pounds of sweet potatoes for under a dollar. Right now, they’re $1.29 a pound. Knowing how much they cost when they’re in season… why would I buy them now? In the winter, strawberries are $5 for a one pound container. Right now, they’re 2 for $3. Again… knowing this, why on Earth would I buy them in the winter? Each season has its own fruits and vegetables that can grow inexpensively, and therefore should be less expensive at your store. If you stick closely to what can be grown in that particular season (which means briefly familiarizing yourself with best options for the current season before you hit the store), you won’t over spend. Yeah, you may want your cherries in the winter… but please believe you will be paying a premium for it.

People who suffer from this problem often wind up not even wanting the fruit they bought – winding up buying it on a whim simply because they’re “surprised to see those in the grocery store this time of year.”

3. You think that as long as it’s marked “organic,” it’s OK to dig in. Not so. Let me explain before I get angry e-mails. Yes, organic is the ideal purchase for those who want to enjoy their food grown properly, without pesticides or other problems(although, if you want to avoid pesticides without purchasing organics, you can always just cling to this list), but just because a food is organic doesn’t mean that the calorie count is automatically decreased to zero! Organic foods, much like anything else, have calories. Sometimes, lots of them. And they affect your body in the same way as inorganics… so you must still be careful.

4. You’re buying too much at one time. Fruits and vegetables have expiration dates… and they don’t keep for years like your typical canned vegetable. If you buy too much at once, something is going to rot. It’s that simple. Spend a little time planning out your week’s worth of food and snacks – keeping in mind what food items you can use, re-use (using apple slices instead of whole apples means you have lots of slices to use in other dishes), and what will keep longer than a week (a bag of flour, for example) – and that’s the fastest way to save your dough.

5. You’re not exercising proper portion control. I see you over there… giant bowl of organic whole wheat pasta with raw milk alfredo and a giant slab of butter from the farmer’s market. You can’t do that! Not only is that crazy for your figure, but your wallet. Raw milk is almost $6! Why waste so much of it in such a way that doesn’t even affect the taste of your dish? Beyond a certain point, using “a whole bunch” of something simply doesn’t add to the taste of your dish. I flavor my dishes with herbs and spices, which allows me to use far less in the form of creams and cheeses and sauces. I don’t cut them out completely, but I use much less (case in point).

Once I figured out these five tips, my grocery budget decreased like you would not believe. At this point in time, it’s actually FAR more expensive for me to buy processed foods, simply because I can’t make use of them in the same way as I would my fruits and veggies. Besides… I’m a darn good cook – I don’t want anyone else cooking for me.

5 Reasons You’re Spending Too Much On Eating Clean is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Q&A Wednesday: Is Clean Eating An Eating Disorder?
2. Clean and Healthy Eating on Food Stamps
3. Presenting: The 7 Day Clean Eating Challenge

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

Get BGG2WL delivered wirelessly to your Kindle! Click here for more info!

© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 14 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cheap food, clean eating, fruits, Healthy Eating, healthy living, organic food, saving money, vegetables

No, really.

Only thing more beautiful than all those veggies... is all those cheap prices. *drool*

Not because of the TV dinners… or the biscuits… or the… whatevers. But because of the frozen veggies. I’m serious!

I’m not even talking brand name frozen veggies, either. I’m talking the private label stuff. Pick up those store brand Kroger veggies… or Publix veggies… or Albertson’s veggies… whatever, y’all.

A giant bag of fresh spinach? On this date, could run me upwards of $2.50. I can get a container of frozen spinach for $0.87 right now. I’d simply have to forego the spinach salads if my money was tight.

Fresh mushrooms? Cost me approximately $2.79 right now. Frozen? $1.29.

Brussel sprouts? (Yes, Brussel sprouts.) $2.89 fresh. Frozen? $1.49.

Need I go on? Seriously. I’ve already saved about $4 thus far… and y’all know I’m cheap.

My secret go-to dish is always a stir-fry… especially if I can buy a bag of “Japanese stir fry vegetables” with mushrooms, green beans and onions… and all I’ve got to do is make my sauce and add a little sesame oil. C’mon. That’s just too easy.

On the question of whether or not frozen veggies stack up:

…as winter approaches, fresh produce is limited—or expensive—in much of the country, which forces many of us to turn to canned or frozen options. While canned vegetables tend to lose a lot of nutrients during the preservation process (notable exceptions include tomatoes and pumpkin), frozen vegetables may be even more healthful than some of the fresh produce sold in supermarkets, says Gene Lester, Ph.D., a plant physiologist at the USDA Agricultural Research Center in Weslaco, Texas. Why? Fruits and vegetables chosen for freezing tend to be processed at their peak ripeness, a time when—as a general rule—they are most nutrient-packed.

While the first step of freezing vegetables—blanching them in hot water or steam to kill bacteria and arrest the action of food-degrading enzymes—causes some water-soluble nutrients like vitamin C and the B vitamins to break down or leach out, the subsequent flash-freeze locks the vegetables in a relatively nutrient-rich state.

On the other hand, fruits and vegetables destined to be shipped to the fresh-produce aisles around the country typically are picked before they are ripe, which gives them less time to develop a full spectrum of vitamins and minerals. Outward signs of ripening may still occur, but these vegetables will never have the same nutritive value as if they had been allowed to fully ripen on the vine. In addition, during the long haul from farm to fork, fresh fruits and vegetables are exposed to lots of heat and light, which degrade some nutrients, especially delicate vitamins like C and the B vitamin thiamin.

Bottom line: When vegetables are in-season, buy them fresh and ripe. “Off-season,” frozen vegetables will give you a high concentration of nutrients. [...] Eat them soon after purchase: over many months, nutrients in frozen vegetables do inevitably degrade. Finally, steam or microwave rather than boil your produce to minimize the loss of water-soluble vitamins.

For those of us in areas where there is no winter farmer’s market nearby, or no reasonable supply of winter vegetables on sale at inexpensive prices? This is absolutely the next best thing!

Other posts in the series:

• Save Money On Groceries: Buy It In Bulk
• Save Money On Groceries: Buy It In Season
• Save Money On Groceries: Go Weekly
• Save Money On Groceries: Buy The Private Label (Go Generic!)
• Save Money On Groceries: Go Frozen!
• Q&A Wednesday: The $50 Challenge
• Save Money on Groceries: Go… Smaller?
• Save Money On Groceries: The Readers Share Their Tips!

Save Money On Groceries: Go Frozen! is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Save Money On Groceries: Buy It In Bulk
2. Save Money On Groceries: Go… Smaller?
3. Save Money On Groceries: Buy The Private Label (Go Generic!)

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

Get BGG2WL delivered wirelessly to your Kindle! Click here for more info!

© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: butter, carrots, clean eating, crushed red pepper, el cheapo, frozen, frozen veggies, garlic, pinto beans, saving money, spinach, squash, tomato, vegetables

At my regular trip to the grocery store, I just paid two dollars for a pound and a half worth of oats to make my own oatmeal. That’s gonna last me… about three weeks. I can make oatmeal, granola, cereal, cookies and cupcakes. All with two dollars worth of oatmeal.

If I decide to venture down a grocery store aisle, I’ll find a bag with little packages of raisins inside for about two dollars. If I decide to buy them in bulk, I can get a pound of raisins for $3. A POUND? That’ll last me almost all summer.

When I buy my garlic powder – the actual garlic powder, not the stuff that has trans fat in it and not garlic salt – it’s something like two dollars for a two ounce container. If I buy it in bulk, I’m paying $0.39 per ounce.

In my grocery store of choice, the quinoa is $1.39/lb. In the same store, the packaged quinoa? $2.29 for one pound. No, grocery store, you cannot have my $0.90. It’s mine. It might be couch change, but it’s my couch change.

Why is buying in bulk so cheap?

When you pay for a name brand product, you’re paying for the following:

1. Gas to get it from the factory to its location
2. Packaging – Yes, dear consumer, you’re paying your hard earned money for that box and that plastic, that Styrofoam and that foil wrapper. Eat up!
3. Branding – Oh, you’re going to pay a premium for that brand name. This is America. We’ll pay for a brand name.
4. Marketing and advertisement – brands need to be hyped up. So it becomes your responsibility, dear consumer, to pay for it.

As you can see, if the branding and marketing of a product hits on all the right notes at the same time, it strikes the perfect chord: it tells the consumer that you’re paying this high of a price because you are paying for quality. I can name about five brands off the top of my head that would quickly highlight how this is not always the case.

When you buy your product in bulk, you’re not buying marketing. There’s no brand for which you have to pay a premium. There’s also no additional pollution in the form of pretty boxes, cans or wrapping to deal with. It saves the planet – a big point in clean eating – and saves your pennies. Sure, $0.90 might seem like a little, but if I buy my beans, lentils, quinoa, raisins, cashews, pretzels, brown rice, basmati rice, jasmine rice, pastry flour, sunflower seeds, carob chips, pretzels, oatmeal, garlic powder, onion chips, bay leaves, basil, tarragon, rosemary, thyme, cinnamon, spearmint and peanut butter in bulk? I’m easily saving $30 by the end of my trip.

So, how do you find grocery stores with a “bulk shopping” setup?

A few grocery store chains may have a bulk shopping aisle – might be used mainly for candy, but don’t be afraid to regularly call and harass your grocer about adding healthier stuff to the bulk section. It’s cheaper not only for you, but for them, too. Once they see there’s a demand for it and that they could make money off of it, they’re sure to expand. The healthier grocery stores will more than likely have ‘em, so don’t be afraid to drop in and stop by. I’m almost certain that the bulk shopping section is a staple of Whole Foods.

You also have the option of shopping online! If you are already familiar with what spices you desire, you can check out Penzey’s. For beans, grains and nuts? You might be better off trying to find a local store, and only visiting once a month. The online joints – though you can find good bulk deals there – often don’t allow you the same kind of options to choose the weight of your purchase, and can give you a little bit of a sticker shock. Good luck!

Other posts in the series:

• Save Money On Groceries: Buy It In Bulk
• Save Money On Groceries: Buy It In Season
• Save Money On Groceries: Go Weekly
• Save Money On Groceries: Buy The Private Label (Go Generic!)
• Save Money On Groceries: Go Frozen!
• Q&A Wednesday: The $50 Challenge
• Save Money on Groceries: Go… Smaller?
• Save Money On Groceries: The Readers Share Their Tips!

Save Money On Groceries: Buy It In Bulk is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Save Money On Groceries: Go… Smaller?
2. Save Money On Groceries: Go Frozen!
3. Save Money On Groceries: Buy The Private Label (Go Generic!)

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

Get BGG2WL delivered wirelessly to your Kindle! Click here for more info!

© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clean eating, grocery shopping, Healthy Eating, saving money

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What Tips Does “America’s Cheapest Family” Have For You? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Open Thread: Do You Have Tips On How To Choose And Find A Therapist?
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The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

Get BGG2WL delivered wirelessly to your Kindle! Click here for more info!

© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2010. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: grocery shopping, saving money