Speaker 1: Hi guys, it's your girl Beautiful Brown Babydoll and I'm coming today to talk to you about ways that you can eat healthier on a budget. Prices are rising, but chances are your paycheck is not. Worse yet, if you're a student, you need healthy fats, proteins, lean meats, good carbohydrates for energy, and lots of other nutrients and vitamins in order to maintain a healthy diet. You know where your extra money is going. If you start to track your budget and see where you're actually spending your money, you'll have more to spend on healthier foods. When I was in college, when I was in graduate school, I was just very careful about what I bought. I put myself on a budget. I knew how much I could use every week towards food and I was that strict about it. Not only did I lose 100 pounds in graduate school alone, I also was able to control my pockets. I hope that my tips today will help you in conquering your way through getting healthy food on any budget. My first suggestion is to stop buying food outside of your home. When you prepare your food at home, you're able to see what you put in it, what you're cooking it with, as opposed to olive oil or fats or other things that other people might put into your food that are sneaky calories. If you prepare the food at home, you know how it's made. You know how many calories, fats, proteins, carbohydrates, all of that is in there. You don't have to worry about asking what somebody else put in your food. The other thing is eat before you go out to eat. So if you know you're going to have an engagement with friends, eat something at home. You're less likely to overeat when you're out and pay more money out of your budget. Take things like nuts, fruits, and snack crackers with you in your bag or in your purse in order for you to feel less hungry when you're out or when you're out on the town, when you're shopping, when you're with friends, or especially when you know there's going to be access to food. I bring something low calorie and sweet with me, especially when I know I'm going to be around cookies and candy and stuff I have no business eating. Make sure that you kind of keep things along with you. Prepare your food. Make sure you know what's in it. You're also not going to be tempted to spend more money than you have, and you can spend more money on the food that you put into your home. The next one is to stop buying food on an impulse. Not planning at all is planning to fail. When you go to the grocery store, make yourself a list. Only allow that list to go about two weeks worth of food. Know exactly what you're going to get and get out of there. Don't stick around looking for stuff that, ooh, maybe I can try this, or ooh, I've been wanting to try that. Anything that's not on your list, don't leave the store with it. Another tip is to not take people with you because when you get people with you and they start buying stuff and you're looking at their basket like, oh, but they're having fun and they got all the cool, little fun foods, you're going to be more likely to be tempted to buy what they have. I don't have children yet, but I have shopped with children, and a lot of times they like to have the sweets and the cool stuff that's out there, the bat, or even the sugar-filled cereals. In order to avoid that, I suggest just going by yourself. Make sure that you make that list ahead of time, and I guarantee you, you'll start to see your budget increase, you'll have more money to do better things with and buy foods that you really are not going to eat or really don't want. If you buy four apples and usually two of them go bad, only buy two apples. Save yourself some money. Keep yourself on a budget so that you're not going to run over that, and that you also make sure that you're spending wisely. The next thing is to buy everything from one to two places. Y'all know y'all out here tripping, shopping at 12 different stores to figure out one bargain. Mm-mm. Time is money, and gas is money. You're probably burning gas and your time. Find two places that you like to shop. I love Kroger and H-E-B down here in Texas. I'm sure wherever you live, there are different grocery stores that are awesome. Of course, you can find places where you can fill in things. Those should be along your way and along your route. Find at least one to two places that you enjoy, that have most of the deals, or steady prices that you're used to instead of wasting gas trying to go to a million different places to find one deal. Now it's time for beautiful brown baby doll news. Here are some awesome food buys in all of the major food groups that I buy for under a dollar at the store. The healthy whole grains include the whole grain pasta, brown rice, and popcorn. Healthy fruit include bananas, oranges, apples, watermelon, pears, and grapes. Healthy vegetables include canned pumpkin, canned tomatoes, sweet potatoes, kale, squash, broccoli, and carrots. Healthy proteins include canned tuna and salmon, chicken breast, tofu, black beans, eggs, almonds, and peanuts. Healthy dairy includes low-fat cottage cheese, low-fat or fat-free skim milk, and Greek yogurt. Healthy drinks include water, tea, and coffee. Now back to our regular scheduled programming. That said, make sure that you clip coupons and also get the customer discount card. Where I shop at Kroger, you can go and get different deals. Get up to like a dollar or two off on certain items if you have the discount card. Discount cards sometimes earn you fuel points. I'm able to get fuel for like 10 cents off a gallon just because I shop and get my groceries at Kroger. So make sure that you keep in mind all of the things that might come along with having a discount card from a store. Learn how to coupon clip, get the most out of the stores that you are shopping from. That also saves you a bunch of trips to different places to get different deals. And you can use a coupon to get the same deal or better at some of the only stores that you shop at. Stop popping bottles. And by bottles, I mean water bottles. Just invest in a Brita pitcher. One filter on a Brita cleans 40 gallons of water. You do the math. You will be drinking tap water, but it will be filtered and it'll taste better. The next tip is to buy discounted meats. I usually go into like the fish market area, the deli area, and I buy the meats that just went on sale. I get tuna steaks or I get salmon flanks and I usually end up paying half the price they were when they were fresh and it was only hours before. Ask the person who's behind the counter when they usually put out their fresh meats and when it is that they usually go on sale. I just bring the meat home and I freeze it and it usually keeps for a nice amount of time before I'm able to cook it, especially within a two week period. The next tip is buy cheaper proteins. We need healthy proteins in order to burn fat and also build muscle. The more proteins you have, the more fat you can burn. Save the expensive steak and lobster for later or for a special occasion. You don't need that to build healthy muscle and to lose fat. You can buy protein cheap. Some of those foods will include eggs, milk, tuna, frozen chicken breast or chicken thighs, cottage cheese, and oftentimes my favorite, Greek yogurt. You'll build up the grams of protein that you need per day to build muscle and burn fat and you'll be doing it on a healthy budget. The next thing is to buy generic foods. A lot of people think that just because they're buying something that they saw on TV, it makes it more healthy. Go in and compare your neighborhood store's brands to the brands that you think are more popular. A lot of times you'll be surprised and find that they have just as many nutrients, just as much protein, carbohydrates, healthy oils, vitamins, fats, sometimes it's for a little less and even more than half the price. This can include like frozen vegetables, eggs, rice, cheese, milk, and at first you'll swear it tastes different, but I can guarantee you after a while, it's the same thing. I've caught some good taste in generic stuff that was even better than the stuff that I like to buy because it was more expensive or more well known. The next tip is though whole foods are better, some of you might have to invest in supplements. Throughout my college career, I took prenatal vitamins. Prenatals have a lot of vitamins, in fact maybe over the amount of vitamins that you need to fill in gaps that you're not getting in your diet. I actually went into the doctor and asked about the best vitamins to take for me. That was one of the suggestions that was made was prenatals just because it had so many of the vitamins that I might have been missing in my diet, especially by me being a broke college and graduate student at the time. Try buying some of the whey protein, it's fairly cheap, it's the cheapest form of protein for you to get. Fish oils, your multivitamins, vitamin E, of course whole foods are going to be better. If you don't have the money, vitamin supplements are in second place. If you're really not trying to break the bank, buy fruits and vegetables when they're in season. They taste better, they're fresher, and they're cheaper because they're easier to come by. For those of you all that might want to go radical, have a little more time and accessibility to gardening and animals, you might want to grow your own food. You're able to determine what you put on it in order to keep the bugs off. It's cheaper than frozen foods. If you have enough room to grow your own trees for berries, fruits, and walnuts, then give it a go. I know that there are so many things out there that you can do to save money on a budget and eating healthy. So I want you all to tell me some of the things you're doing down below. Let me know where you're shopping, where are you finding the best deals, what do you see as the best way for you to save money and live healthy. And for those of you all that are in college and graduate school and med school and doing all these wonderful things, tell us also how you saved money and been able to come out on top without having so much money. I'm sure our college students would really appreciate it. Thank you so much for watching guys. Beautiful brown baby doll, peace. Bye.