Thursday, September 27, 2012

Day 53: Upping the food budget

Today I went grocery shopping and spend $40 more than our weekly amount budgeted. Recently, I'd been going over little by little, and had become frustrated that I couldn't stay under budget, no matter how I changed up our plan. I even stopped going to the farmer's market, since I tend to overspend there.

Since being diagnosed with gestational diabetes, I've needed to eat more food overall, and food that is more protein to help with blood sugar levels. More food+more protein=more expensive. I used to be able to get away with a banana and peanut butter for lunch, and maybe another snack sometime throughout the day. Now I'm eating breakfast, a snack, lunch, a snack, dinner, and then another snack. All have some form of protein included. Granted, my  meals are usually a bit smaller, but I'm still trying to reach a healthy 1800 calories a day, which is costing more in groceries.

Alex and I had talked about increasing our food budget once kids come, but I was hoping that meant once the kid was eating real food. Not so. This mama's gotta eat to regulate blood sugar (and feed the baby of course), so we went ahead and increased our weekly budget by another $25. In case anyone wanted to know, we budgeted $100/week, so now we're going to budget $125 per week. That seems like a lot to me, but any diet consisting of mostly non-processed food with plenty of meat, eggs, nuts, and yogurt, just costs that much.

I've included my mid-morning and mid-afternoon snacks in my meal plan, which can be seen by clicking here. In the top right hand corner, you can change to view the plan by weeks instead of the whole month. If any of y'all have some suggestions for me, feel free to comment!

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