How to Keep Healthy on a Budget
With the price of groceries increasing and most gym memberships being very expensive, it can feel like you are getting priced out of leading a healthy lifestyle. However, there are many ways to keep healthy on a budget, with some forward planning and self-motivation.
Here are some ideas for keeping fit and healthy without spending much money:
Make healthy dishes in bulk
Plan out your meals for the week and make batch portions of meals so that you can eat them over several days or freeze them for a later date. Doing this ensures less food wastage, and the meals are more cost-effective when buying the ingredients. Good value batch meals are dishes like curries, chillis, soups and vegetable bakes.
Avoid unhealthy highly processed foods
You probably know that processed foods such as prepackaged meals high in sodium and added sugar are not good for your diet. As well as being unhealthy, these types of foods often cost a lot more than making your own healthier options. Therefore, it would be best if you were aiming to buy more nutrient-rich foods.
Stock up with cheaper healthy foods
Try and use more filling foods that are inexpensive such as lentils, brown rice, non-fat Greek yoghurt, frozen vegetables, multi-grain pasta, kidney beans, and chickpeas. Using a combination of cheaper, filling ingredients with small amounts of meat or other protein types can help keep the cost of healthy meals down.
Drink lots of water
Health experts always recommend drinking plenty of water for several health benefits. From protecting organs and aiding digestion to give you healthier skin, drinking more water can make a big difference to your health. The other excellent health benefit of drinking more water is that it will often reduce your appetite, so you will consume fewer calories and spend less money on food.
Take up running or hiking
To avoid paying gym fees or paying for expensive gym equipment, taking up a free form of exercise like running, hiking or walking offers a great way to stay fit on a budget. As well as not costing you to exercise, you get the benefit of exercising outdoors, which has several additional health benefits. For example, exercising outdoors is very good for relieving stress and boosting your mental health.
Do free online workouts
An alternative exercise to going outside for running or walking is free online exercise tutorials. Joe Wicks created lots of great workout videos during lockdown that you can access online, and there are similar workout videos on YouTube that you can access for free.
Shop at different supermarkets
If you always shop at the same supermarket, you could be overpaying for items that you could buy elsewhere for less money. For example, once you know where to buy your groceries at the best value, you can buy fruit and vegetables at a much lower price each week.