So we talk a lot about sleep in this blog. But what about other aspects of living well?
Food, for example, is a big one for a lot of us.
Recently, one of us had a conversation with his wife about this. It was randomly sparked by the sudden, unfortunate need to replace the radiator in a decade-old car, and the recognition that soon it will be time to buy a new vehicle.
Problem is, buying a new car requires carving out budget space either to save extra over many months or to foot another monthly payment.
The conversation went something like this:
“So if we’re going to do this, is there some discretionary spending we can cut to afford a new car?”
“Hmm. We could tighten our belts and play a lot less.”
“Yeah, but who wants to do that??”
“Well, what do we spend the most on that we could trim? Food, probably.”
“Yikes, yeah. We spend like $400 a month just on eating out!”
“That’s a car payment.”
Americans have a love-hate relationship with food. Food is special—it keeps us alive, which is something. And it brings us together, which is something else. But we struggle because food in our society is plentiful, easy to get and, well, rather removed from its original state.
For some of us, eating means comfort. For others, it means guilt. Some of us enjoy food for food’s sake; others eat a bare minimum and measure every calorie.
In any case, we’re a bit bipolar about our food. We diet; we stress-eat. We eat salads with french fries or beer. We buy low-fat milk to pour in our morning coffee and then eat ice cream for dessert that night. We shop at Whole Foods and buy a bunch of organic healthy stuff and then it sits and rots in the veggie drawer while we munch on chips and salsa in front of the TV. (It’s OK- salsa totally counts as a vegetable!) We hit up sales at grocery stores and then spend an entire week’s grocery budget on one dinner out.
Even those of us who try to eat healthy, limit sugar intake and eat real foods tend to buy a significant amount of processed stuff, like chips, because it’s hard to carve out time to prepare food daily and sometimes, you just need a quick-and-easy snack.
Seriously, they have organic, non-GMO chips practically everywhere now.
But what would happen if we ate simple, whole foods we cooked at home? How much better off would we be—budget and health-wise? We’re not trying to suggest that everyone do this all the time; it’s just not possible for some of our busy lifestyles.
But what if we just did it more? That couple of the car dilemma are going to try to cut eating out entirely for six months. They’re also going to buy mostly whole foods and cook at home more, things like stew and crockpot food that you can make in big batches and heat up for lunch. And they’re going to buy less of those expensive, processed items like chips and Trader Joe’s frozen desserts. (Which if you haven’t had, you haven’t lived, by the way.)
We’ll let you know how it goes
Sleep Tight, Urbanites!