Invest in Your Health

So this is the part where I tell you that you really do have to spend money to be healthy. Admit it, you knew it was too good to be true. Well, hang in there with me. Hopefully, by the end of this post you will see that you really can be healthy while not spending a lot. You will also see, however, that there are some things that I really think are worth the money and have made the journey a little easier.

First of all, your health is important. Isn't it worth your full attention and effort? I have heard it said that in order to see what a person's priorities are, just look at what they spend money on. So I say, surely there are things that you might be able to tighten up on or do without in order to have more money to spend being healthy.

Okay, enough of the lecture. Now to the fun stuff.

1. A stand mixer.
    Last November my husband got a bonus and worked some overtime and bought me a KitchenAid Stand Mixer for Christmas. It has been a great help to me in my efforts to change my eating habits. I have a recipe for stuff called "cloud bread". It calls for whipping egg whites until they are stiff. It helped me get over my craving for real bread and I probably would never have tried it if I didn't have my stand mixer.

2. Alternative flours.
    In my local grocery store they have almost an entire aisle of alternative flours. They come in 1 pound bags, and there is everything from tapioca starch to potato flour, almond flour to flax seed meal. If you are comparing price per pound they really are very expensive. However, most of the recipes I am using only call for a tablespoon or two. So, I started with the flax seed meal. It was in the $3-$4 range and was an ingredient in the cloud bread. When I was looking at dessert recipes I bought almond flour at about $10 which makes a really good pie crust (as long as you are not baking to long or too high a temp). When I was thinking about Thanksgiving and wanting to have gravy, I bought the tapioca starch. None of these are things that I use a lot of, so the price is not out of reach of the budget that I have to work with.

3. Individualized containers
    One of my things is that whatever I do has to be convenient.  I don't do anything if it doesn't make my life easier. I found a bowl made by Ziploc that holds just under 2 cups. Whenever I make a recipe that I can make lots of at a time, I split it into the bowls and freeze them. Then when I am leaving for work, I just grab a bowl from the freezer and go. These bowls come 5 to a pack, so whenever I went to Wal-Mart I picked up another pack until I had about 40. They don't stand up to freezer, microwave, dishwasher use forever so they have to be replaced after a while, but they have made it lots easier to stick to an eating plan.

4. Deep Freezer.
    This was a big investment, but I was really glad I did it. I have made two or three big pots of stew and chili in one day. The freezer attached to my refrigerator wouldn't hold even the bowls from one pot. So I was able to stock up for almost a month and I would not have been able to do it if I didn't have the deep freeze. Now it did take a little creativity to come up with this. I ended up splitting the cost of the freezer with my neighbor. We live in an apartment and share common patio space so it works for us.

This is my list. It doesn't necessarily have to be your list. I do think that you have to evaluate what is important to you. If your health is really important, you find a way to make the necessary changes.