Losing control, time to take charge.

Caspeia · 9 July 2018 at 4:37PM

Heres comes a very boring post.

I seen someone else do it on their diary which I thought was interesting. Can't remember who though.

Basically I want to work out how much my food costs me per day. When I lost weight back in May I ate the same thing for most meals except for tea, my plan is to do that again as I actually really enjoyed it and stuck to it. I tried to eat a lot more protein which made me fuller for longer.

So my meals:
Breakfast: porridge with cocao powder, protein powder, oat milk, peanut butter and agave nectar
Lunch: chicken salad (lettuce, tomato, pepper, sweetcorn, carrot and cucumber) and a protein shake for after
Tea: whatever I decide to cook that night
Snacks: banana and a protein brownie.

I'm going to take our tea out of the equation as its the only thing that will change.

Breakfast
Oats: 89p for 1kg at Aldi, I use 40g so 4p a portion
Oat milk: £1.50 for 1L, I use 100ml so 15p a portion
Cocao powder: £1.99 for 100g, I use 5g so 10p
Agave nectar: £2.50 for 250ml, I use 5ml so 5p
Protein powder: £24 for 2.5kg, I use half a scoop which is 12/13g in my breakfast so 12p
Peanut butter: £6.50 for 1kg, I use 25g so 16p
Total: 67p

Lunch
Lettuce: 50p and does 3 lunches so 17p
Cucumber: 50p and does four lunches so 12p
Sweetcorn: £1.30 for 3 small tins, use half a tin a day so 22p
Peppers: £1.25 for 3 and lasts 3 days so 42p
Tomato: 69p for 6, lasts 6 meals so 12p
Carrot: 30p for 500g, lasts around 5 days so 6p
Chicken: £2.50 for 200g, I use 100g so £1.25
Dressing: £1 for 180ml I use 20ml so 11p

Total: £2.47

Protein shake after lunch:
24p for scoop made with 50ml water and 100ml unsweetened almond milk (£1.80 for 1L) 18p

Shake: 42p

Snacks:

Banana: 13p each

Protein brownie: 75p

Total for day: £4.44 :eek:

will carry on post on new post as this is getting long

Caspeia · 9 July 2018 at 4:59PM

So some main areas I think I can save on.

Breakfast:
Cut out the cocao powder and agave nectar, I like the cocao powder as it makes it chocolately and the agave nectar sweetens it up. I don't really need it. Cutting those out will be 15p per day.
Peanut butter, buy it from the same place as my protein powder as its only £4.95 for 1kg (I like to get stuff that is pure peanuts, no added salt or oil) I actually got some as a free gift last time I ordered. Switching to cheaper brand, 12p a day instead of 16p a day. Saving 3p.
Total saved would be: 18p on breakfast

Lunch:
sweetcorn, buy lidls instead of asda as its £1.19 instead of £1.30. I know I could buy bigger tins for cheaper but I find they don't last and I end up throwing it out before I've used it. 20p instead of 22p for saving 2p

Peppers: buy the pack that has the green pepper in it, I prefer to have all sweet ones but they are 99p instead of £1.25 which will save 9p a day

Chicken: I feel this is the main one, I currently buy the precooked stuff. If I buy 650g of raw chicken breast for £4 and cook it myself. It will last 6 days and will be 67p instead of £1.25 so saving 58p.

Cut almond milk and just make with wate, 18p a day

Total saved: £1.06

The next thing is the protein brownies and shakes, if I manage to buy it on the buy one get one free sales (normally manage to get between 35% and 40% off, I've put the prices for the 40% off above)

That would save a further 2p at breakfast, 5p at my shake and 15p on my brownie for another 22p.

They always seem to be giving away peanut butter so if I get that free (I have 2kg unused in my house currently!) then it saves 12p.

If I do all of that and manage to buy things at the right time, £1.39 saved so daily cost will be £3.05.

Its still high but a bit better at least

Toni'sfriend · 9 July 2018 at 5:18PM

sweetcorn, buy lidls instead of asda as its £1.19 instead of £1.30. I know I could buy bigger tins for cheaper but I find they don't last and I end up throwing it out before I've used it. 20p instead of 22p for saving 2p

Have you thought of buying frozen sweetcorn and freezing it in portion sizes. I used to buy tins for my son and found exactly the same thing - waste. Now we do this and there's none. Just a thought.

Caspeia · 9 July 2018 at 5:43PM

we have frozen sweetcorn for our teas but I prefer the tinned sweetcorn for salad as it has a nice crisp to it. fussy I know.

I've also just decided I'll either have half a brownie a day or one every two days, I don't really need one per day. I dont want to cut them out though as it makes me feel like Im still eating something nice but it isnt as bad for me as a chocolate bar

Toni'sfriend · 9 July 2018 at 5:56PM

we have frozen sweetcorn for our teas but I prefer the tinned sweetcorn for salad as it has a nice crisp to it. fussy I know.

Not at all. That's fair enough. If you're trying to loose weight the worst thing you can do is not enjoy what you're eating. I love sweetcorn - unfortunately it's usually on the cob covered in butter!!!!

GlendaSugarbean · 9 July 2018 at 6:56PM

Re the weight loss, new advice is that even small weight losses and upping activity levels have massive gains in terms of your health. Personally, I'm not going to get anywhere near my pre-kids weight, but I can try to keep within healthy limits and move around as much as possible, especially as I'm in my crumbly 40s! You've got a lot to manage at the moment, so be kind to yourself

Caspeia · 17 July 2018 at 8:16PM

Shamefully posting to say I've spent on the credit card. I lost my debit card and used my credit card and told myself 'I'll just pay it off as soon as I get home' Did I? Nope! I ended up using it for a few days and ended up spending £119.72

In my budgets I have £103.69 left so I'm leaving myself £50 for the month and pay the rest to the credit card which means we've overspent this month by £66.03.

I'm a bit annoyed at myself but I'm taking it as a learning curve. I worked out from November 2017 to June 2018 I spent £2842.77 on the credit cards which is on average £406.11 spent each month. This month is a lot less and as long as I don't spend anything else on the cards we will have improved. 9 days until I'm officially back at work which will hopefully make money things a lot easier.

I've done a couple of small money saving things recently though.

Earlier my daughter asked for an ice lollies out of the lidl brochure we got, I was about to say yes and then I remembered we had ice lolly moulds so I've used two of the capri suns I bought the other week which my daughter decided she didn't like the straw (children are odd) and I've frozen them into the moulds. She'll be able to have one tomorrow as they will be frozen by then.

Another thing I've been doing is using up the shower gels/conditioners etc we have. I get bored of scents and end up chucking the half used bottle into the cupboard. We have loads of products we haven't used! This month I've finished off 1 shampoo, 3 conditioners and 2 shower gels. I'm also using the body butters I have as well. None of it is cheap, the majority of it is the body shop stuff. I'm hoping to try and use it all up instead of it sitting in the cupboard.

Caspeia · 17 July 2018 at 9:21PM

just doubled checked the money spent on the credit card and it seems the last 3 payments are pending twice (it did this the other week and confused me!). So if I count up how much we've spent its actually £90.22 not £119.72. I'll keep an eye on this and update the proper figures when all the pending payments but if the £90.22 is correct, we've only overspent by around £36

Caspeia · 18 July 2018 at 10:10PM

I've made a list of most things in my cupboard (not any spices/herbs as I have too many and not my baking cupboard either).
There was some suprising finds, I found pork tenderlion in the freezer. Didn't know I had this.. I have 5 tins of tuna and 8 tins of chopped tomatoes... I'm not sure why I need so much of either of them! We also have a lot of frozen veg that we really need to use.

Things in the fridge that need used up is one pepper, couple of onions and some potatoes.

To use up these I've decided to do:
1. veg curry. We have two microwave rices we can use up, couple of spices, coconut milk, an onion, the pepper (I also have frozen peppers I can add!) and some frozen butternut squash and sweet potato chunks. I want to attempt to make naan bread but not sure what I need. I have flour in the house
2. I will use the potatoes and make them into wedges. I found a herby packet mix for wedges and we'll have them with the pork tenderlion (not sure how I'm going to season the pork yet) and also some frozen green beans
3. Spaghetti bolognese with the mince in the freezer, will use the onion and bulk it out with some lentils. I have plenty of chopped tomatoes for this!

Caspeia · 19 July 2018 at 10:39AM

I couldn't get the ice lollies out of the mould, I don't understand why! I had to leave them to defrost for a while before I could get them out.

Two days ago husband got a tip so yesterday I took the kids to a science museum which cost £7.25, parking was £5.10 though! Luckily I had enough change on me to cover it, note to self. Check parking before going! I just assumed they would have their own free carpark but it was a council car park. My daughter then got a toy glider thing from the gift shop which cost 75p. I would normally let her get what she wants but we went in there with a budget of £1 (all the change I had left). I didn't use anything on my card so my £50 is still there safe.

Husband got another tip yesterday of £7.25 which alongside my 25p change left over brings us to £57.50 between my purse and my current account

I've been checking our online banking everyday for the past few days which I'm glad I did as hello fresh charged us despite the fact I skipped the box for next week so this morning I've contacted them and got a refund.
The credit card has put through the pending payments and we had spent £86.35 on the credit card, paid £53.69 of it so it means our overspend this month is £32.66. One part of me was tempted to pay it off but it would mean we'd only be left with £24.84 for the rest of the month which will just leave us really short. I am planning to minimise the amount of money we do spend so hopefully we can pay some of it off before the end of the month so our overspend will hopefully be a lot smaller.

I'm hoping I don't need fuel this month, I have around 110 miles worth of journeys to do for the rest of the month and I have 1/4 of a tank left. I might have to top up a little bit but I think I'll just put the minimum of 5L in if I had to.

On good news I've now lost a total of 1st 0.8lb since May! Only 7st more to go

Losing control, time to take charge.

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