1) Bring Your Lunch To Work
There is not doubt that fast food can wreck your health. Everything is fried and heavily processed, making it a challenge to eat fast food and keep a healthy waistline, not to mention clean arteries. Just consider the calorie content of the average fast food meal and you will see that there is a huge problem. Order up a chicken sandwich or a burger with fries and the calorie count quickly reaches 1000 calories or more. Considering that the average person has a daily calorie requirement of roughly 2000 calories, there is no way that eating half your calories in one meal can be good for you.
Instead of ordering fast food, take a brown bag to work. A sandwich and chips or a nice salad and you have a much healthier meal that falls within your recommended calories. As a side benefit, you will also save money. Considering that the average fast food meal now comes in at close to 10 dollars, you are spending 200 dollars or more a month on fast food. That is money a lot of money to spend on something that is only making you unhealthy and likely slowly killing you.
2) Start Planning Your Meals
Fitness begins and ends in the kitchen. You might think that it is all about working out, but this is not the case. If you want to be fit, you need to have a healthy diet and meal planning can help you do that.
The concept behind meal planning is very simple. You plan out all of the meals for the week and then use this list to purchase the groceries that you need. It makes organizing your weekly meals easy and when things are easy, you are much more likely to stick to a healthy diet. Without a plan of what you are going to serve, you are much more likely to take the easy way out and get fast food or order something in. More often than not, when you do that it will result in you eating something unhealthy.
The financial benefit to meal planning is that you can drastically cut down on food waste. With a detailed list in hand, you are unlikely to purchase a lot of groceries that you do not need. These are groceries that might very well end up in the trash can, so you can imagine the savings potential. It is not uncommon for families to save 20 percent on their food costs and that can end up being 3000 dollars or more in a year.
3) Drink More Water
The healthiest thing that you can drink is good old fashioned water, but so many people choose other more expensive drinks. If you drink soda or really anything else, you are throwing not only your health away, but your money as well.
Consider that soda now costs roughly 5 dollars for a twelve pack. If you drink 4 cans a day, you are wasting 50 dollars a month in unnecessary expenses. If you are ordering soda at a restaurant, it can be even more. Besides the money, you are also jeopardizing your health. This is particularly true if you drink full sugar soda which can have as much as 200 calories per can. That can cause weight gain and since it is all sugar, it can put you at risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
Sugar free soda is not much better. If you are a diet soda drinker, you might think that you are in the clear, but research may prove you wrong. Diet soda has a slew of unhealthy chemicals in it, just read the label, and has been shown to increase sugar cravings. That means you may not gain weight from the diet soda but it may make you crave real sugar that will do some damage.
4) Workout Online
While diet is the biggest part of staying healthy, you still need to get plenty of physical exercise in. For many, this means going to a gym or at least joining a gym. These gym memberships can be expensive however, costing as much as 100 dollars a month. That is bad enough, but what is worse is if you do not go to the gym because of the inconvenience. Thousands of people right now are paying for memberships that they just do not use because they have found out that they simply do not like the gym.
Save money and workout at home with the help of online exercise programs. There are literally thousands of free advertising programs online. Not only will you save money with them, but you will also keep away boredom. The ability to do a new exercise program every day may very well keep you motivated and interested.
To Sum It Up
So can you get healthy and save money at the same time? Absolutely. So many people think that you have to spend money to be a healthy person, but this is not the case. You just need to start some healthy habits and be smart about things. Do so and you will soon see the money savings start to roll in. In addition, you will likely receive other financial benefits besides savings. It has been proven that those who are fit are more productive and earn more money. Don’t believe it? Try it for yourself and see.