Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

Makingabobor2

Exactly @Suffolk_lass. I advised my friend about increasing exercise as well....only to be told she did 2800 steps one day and was very proud of herself!!!!!  When I suggested she need to get more towards the 8-10K mark, she said that was over doing it and made her feel out of breath!  There's just no helping some people.  

Humdinger1

lucielle said:

@Humdinger1 I thought lentils would be carb?  Interested as trying to get into keto.

Thanks L

Lentils lower blood sugar.  I think keto overlaps to a degree with diet recommended for diabetics but it doesn't entirely mirror it.  It is complicated isnt it @lucielle! 

foxgloves

Morning Campers! Well, I popped on here with my coffee & banana and found all your comments about healthy eating. Reading them has made me feel really motivated, so thank-you. 
@Suffolk_lass - Yes, let's see how we both get on with our resumed healthy eating. I will defo have some Easter treats & I do have a Spring birthday, but this has to be a long term thing, so celebrations are going to happen & they need to be managed. I will decide which days are treat days on both those occasions & make sure I am back on plan immediately afterwards.

@Humdinger1 - You've done really well to reverse your diabetes. I do worry that this is where I'm headed if I don't get my you-know-what together, although I don't have any obvious symptoms atm & have never been told I am in the 'pre' category. I agree re carbs. I had to lower my carb intake while following the Traffic Light Diet because I could only have 6 (7 absolute max but not often) portions of 'amber' food a day. This meant that I mostly dropped bread-based lunches & replaced them with salad bowls made from a protein source such as tuna, chicken or reduced fat mozzarella or feta, often with something like cannellini beans or chickpeas & plenty of assorted vegetation. I was dropping 1lb to 2lbs per week, but Mr F, who was sticking to it really well & who has a much better daily step-count than me, was only losing around 1/2 lb a week, which is low for a big bloke. I suggested that instead of a sandwich-based packed lunch, I pack him up a hefty salad box, similar to what I'd been eating, but bigger. He agreed to try it & by the end of that week, he'd lost 4lbs!
 I'm not an emotional eater......I'm just a shocking picker & enjoy baking far too much!

@lucielle - Not all foods fall neatly into one category or the other. Pulses do contain carbohydrate, but are also a good source of protein & are low on the glycaemic index. 

@makingabobor2 - I remember some years ago, I was listening to a programme on Radio 4 - I think it may have been 'Woman's Hour' & there was somebody being interviewed who specialised in exercise for 50+ women. She said that the positive health benefits of walking start to kick in at the 7,000 steps per day level, which she is a good number to aim for because it doesn't sound as daunting as 10,000 steps. From that day I set my fitness tracker to 7k steps. Recently, I'll fully admit I haven't been achieving it - I've been slipping on various healthy targets - but generally, I feel it is achievable & as I know it is the point where the benefits kick in for women of my age, I see I've reached it & feel motivated to do more. When I'm operating on all cylinders, I do often achieve 10k+, especially during gardening season when I'll find my total has been bumped up barely without me noticing because it's 200 steps from the house to the shed & back & I am up & down so many times in one session.
Re diabetes advice, I know someone who was sent to an advice session on food & nutrition, & was then told on repeated occasions by the specialist nurse that insulin injections would very soon be necessary if dietary advice was not followed, but who still decided not to address lifestyle issues in any way & is now injecting. Similar to debt problems, really, in that you can't make somebody want to do something. They have to do it for themselves.
F

foxgloves

And now I'd better get today's post on, although it isn't very exciting.....when is it?!
*Added next week's meal plans to the monthly planner in my diary.
*Will write grocery shopping list this afternoon. It will be the final shop of February's budget cycle & I will write the amount of money left in our grocery budget on the list so as to concentrate Mr F's mind! (He's planning on picking up the shopping tomorrow as he drives very close to the supermarket on his way home from work).
*Did my mid-month budget check-in. I am £6.18 adrift from where I calculated I should be. I did have a quick look at the most obvious possibilities, as I do like to know where I've gone astray, but I didn't find any errors in the arithmetic, & decided it was worth more than £6.18's worth of my time to launch a forensic enquiry. £60.18, yes definitely, £618.....panic stations, steam coming off the calculator late into the night, but I can live with £6.18. The most likely scenario is that it is a price rise differential on a monthly DD, which I could have logged on my spreadsheet as starting in March, but actually should have been recorded as February. 
*Workman date for hedges & a couple of other jobs now booked for next week, which has motivated me to finish that list of garden jobs for Mr F - I made good inroads with it yesterday but have thought of a few more things & he seems to be raring to go, starting this Sunday, apparently!
*Very little effort required for tonight's nosebag, as it's jacket potato night. Mr F is rather predictably making man-stew. I shall have cottage cheese & coleslaw.
*On the make & mend front.....I intend to pick up & knit the instep shaping on the socks for the presents stash during my lunch break. I also have an item to mend.
*I'd expected a rainy day today, but the sun is streaming through the windows of 'Foxgloves HQ'. If no sign of precipitation by this afternoon, I intend to pop out & give the back courtyard a good sweep. I find sweeping good exercise, as it's quite a big space & I really need to get the brush in between the stone slabs so I end up feeling I've had a little workout. Assorted corvids have been chucking clumps of moss down from the roof. I have 3 plants which need adding to existing containers & one (shredded by a combination of offspring of the Evil Weevil, then a gobbley blackbird) to tip out & re-do.
*I've done 3 surveys - Feb's PA total for the savings pots now at £31+. Will keep up with that & cash out on the 28th.
Right, m'dears.....I did tell you it wasn't going to be exciting......time to sign out & crack on.
F x

badmemory

You are so lucky to be able to let that amount go.  I can't even leave a 2p difference alone.  At least I know when it is because I have done a typo.  Like 17 instead of 71 because the difference is 54 & is divisible by 9.  A mine of useless information here.

foxgloves

Well I won't deny that it annoyed me, @badmemory, but it wasn't an error that came to light after what I considered to be a reasonable amount of time looking, so for me, it then becomes a case of how much of my time it's worth, given that £6.18 isn't a large sum.
Of course the mystery may yet solve itself when my next Big Budget Day rolls around & I go through all of this month's receipts.
F

Moorviews

The 4 ounces of meat per person is what I also remember from my Domestic Science class when I did my Food and Nutrition O’Level. My teacher was quite a stickler and fairly scary so practically everything she said has stuck 😂 I didn’t know about the 2oz concept in something like fajitas or bolognese sauce though and I have made a note of that thank you. I notice a lot of more modern recipe books do have larger meat portions specified than in the 60s and 70s. We are eating a lot less meat and far more vegetables generally, which suits us well now, so I’ll definitely be getting the scales out for the remaining beef and making it stretch further. Being in our 60s, we don’t need loads of protein or any extra padding of our meals, or our waistlines! Like others, there are a few pounds to be shed here too which I really do need to get on with. I like the idea of counting steps and am wondering if we have a step counter about the house somewhere that I might have bought for Mr MV years ago. 

It’s always a sweet moment to find a heart shaped stone or pebble. It’s lovely that you found one on Valentine’s Day 😊 
Hopefully that naughty £6.18 will reveal itself at some point soon. 

badmemory

I cut down our meat a few years ago to half & recently by another quarter, that's on top of cutting portion sizes although those have crept up a little since Christmas I have realised.  I can tell by the number of portions available to freeze.  Whoops must try harder!  Nothing new there then.

marionmgcars

After buying 2 magic bags from Aldi I spent the morning vacuum packing the food in individual portions - left lots of space, rather than using takeaway containers.  Now have two small  freezers well stocked, so hopefully won’t need to spend too much more this month on food budget.

then spent two hours at my knitting group, enjoying a cup of tea and lovely company.  Feel like it’s been a good day 👍

weenancyinAmerica

There was a book out a number of years ago about YUFFIES- young urban failures, those baby boomers who stayed on the left and took service jobs for the most part, as opposed to the Yuppies who went to the right politically and made money and are now probably living off their investments. I was a Yuffie - writer and worked for a church, never made enough money to invest in anything except McDonald's toys. Most of the Yuffies were born between 1945 and 1950, considered hard-core baby boomers, - right after the war when our parents didn't have any money and like mine were still in school trying to make up for the years they spent in the military or doing war work instead. So we had a financially-poor upbringing but mostly rich in family life and mothers still being at home. My youngest sister is a much later baby boomer - still on the left because of family, but can't live on her salary which is 4 + times my highest salary. My other sister, two years younger than me, married a teacher, and did what many teachers do - saved like crazy and never got involved in the buy-it-now culture so they are doing great. Sometimes I think there is more peer pressure problems in office jobs, like my younger sister has ($250 for a purse! That is more than my entire wardrobe cost.)