Value diet

GhostHunter_3

Hi

I am trying to stick to a healthy eating plan (hate the word diet lol) and although I have looked in the cheaper shops like Lidle's all the stuff there seems to be not what I need or too high in fat or sugar.

As my only alternative to our local Lidle supermarket is Tesco (my prefered) or Iceland (where I havent shopped for years) I am trying to plan my weekly shop with the Tesco Value range of stock, especially conveinience meals for my husband always on the go and plenty of salad, fruit and veg for myself!
We have no local greengrocer for miles so cant make use of their individual pickings.

Just to explain as I know people are going to comment to shope elsewhere other than Tesco being our only supermarket giant locally I am trying to save the clubcard points as I use these on Christmas and BBQ shops where 'extra' is required or for gifts and on the rare ocasion a holiday in the UK.

There is myself who likes eating most things, my hubby who'se consumption of fruit is non existant and veg is diabolical (potatoes, chopped tinned tomatoes, peas and carrotts) and our 2 dogs who other than Value complete will eat almost all scraps, including salad and veg (usually end up with hubbys leftovers)!

I am hoping its possible to have a combination of conveinience meals and cook from recipies (adapted to suit hubby) with, for me, extra veg, salad and fruit as cooking from scratch is not my style and is more expensive sometimes in our household.

Have been looking round the Old Style board but nothing jumps out.

Anyone help with this challenge?

Many thanks

parsonswife8

GhostHunter wrote: »

Hi

I am trying to stick to a healthy eating plan (hate the word diet lol) and although I have looked in the cheaper shops like Lidle's all the stuff there seems to be not what I need or too high in fat or sugar.

As my only alternative to our local Lidle supermarket is Tesco (my prefered) or Iceland (where I havent shopped for years) I am trying to plan my weekly shop with the Tesco Value range of stock, especially conveinience meals for my husband always on the go and plenty of salad, fruit and veg for myself!
We have no local greengrocer for miles so cant make use of their individual pickings.

Just to explain as I know people are going to comment to shope elsewhere other than Tesco being our only supermarket giant locally I am trying to save the clubcard points as I use these on Christmas and BBQ shops where 'extra' is required or for gifts and on the rare ocasion a holiday in the UK.

There is myself who likes eating most things, my hubby who'se consumption of fruit is non existant and veg is diabolical (potatoes, chopped tinned tomatoes, peas and carrotts) and our 2 dogs who other than Value complete will eat almost all scraps, including salad and veg (usually end up with hubbys leftovers)!

I am hoping its possible to have a combination of conveinience meals and cook from recipies (adapted to suit hubby) with, for me, extra veg, salad and fruit as cooking from scratch is not my style and is more expensive sometimes in our household.

Have been looking round the Old Style board but nothing jumps out.

Anyone help with this challenge?

Many thanks

_________________________________________________

Have you looked on the Tesco website?

You can look at a list of the value things they stock, as well as have a look at their current special offers, which incluses BOGOF, weekly specials etc.

You need to register to view, I think.

Also, Lidl have quite good prices on frozen fish meals.

Bunny200

Well I have to say that from personal experience you will eat healthier and cheaper if you cook from scratch. For example a spag bol, even if you use a Dolmio/Ragu/Value pasta sauce will have large quanities of salt, sugar and fat as well as being much more expensive than making it from scratch. Same for curry, pizza, cottage pie, in fact I can't think of many conveince meals that are healthy, even the ones labels as such actually aren't.
The only way to eat healthly (and lose weight?) is to know what you are eating by preparing it yourself that way you are in control and can make the decision to eat more or one element than another. Starting to cook from stratch is a big thing so the best advice I can give, as with many OS things is baby steps, I don't expect you are going to be baking your own bread straight away but maybe look at the meals you enjoy and see if you can find a recipe to replace the meal, there are loads of recipe websites to help. www.recipezaar.com is great but American so sometimes the ingrediants aren't obvious what they are www.allrecipes.com is a great british site as are Delias, Sainsburys and BBC. Try doing that once a week and you'll soon build up a repitoire of recipes that you can use to budget and control your eating.

Good luck and let us know how you get on

P.S. Fill up on cheap veg & fruit and pulses for extra healthy cheap meals!

r.mac_2

hiya

a few hints and tips that I find work/have worked in the past for me.

soups are easy to make and healthy, can be frozen and are ideal for a packed lunch and/or padding out other meals. Fry a little onion add some other chopped veggies of your choice and add some water and a stock cube. padd out with some pulses. Cheap and filling and healthy. tomato soups and gazpacho soup is yummy cold as well.

If you make something like spaghetti bolognase cook double the amount - doesn't take any extra time, but if you have the leftovers in fridge/freezer then you have a 'ready meal' for another day.

don't buy bags of salad - a whole lettuce is cheaper, healthier and lasts longer as well as giving more leaves

remember the 80:20 principle - try and be healthy 80% time, but live a little the other 20%.

hope this helps a little x

larmy16

I am not sure how true this is, but did read it somewhere. It was recommended that you do buy salad leaves instead of lettuce as the lettuce has no nutritional value and the darker the leaf, the better they are for you.

I do buy the bag of salad, as its just me and I find I end up wasting a whole lettuce. I often get them half price though reduced etc. in Waitrose.

My fave diet (cheap) meals are

Egg and Slimming world chips and beans

Soya mince bolgnese and spaghetti

Chick Pea Curry and brown rice

Quorn Sausages (not cheap), j. potato, veg and cheese

Carrot and coriander soup

Lentil Dahl

Mung bean dahl

For me adding 1 tbsp of single cream (about 30 cals I think) lifts all these humble meals (bar E&Chips and Sausage meal) out of the ordinary and into luxury.

I no longer eat bread or any kind of spread so this cuts down a lot of expense.

I do occasionally use tinned ravioli, approx 50p a tin on pasta, but I get four servings out of that.