Need to do Keto on a budget?
Change in geographical area has always meant a change in diet for us. Sometimes, for the better; and sometimes, for the worse.
Moving to Texas has been more of the same.
This is our third residence since we came here, and each time we have changed locations, we have had to make a drastic change in our shopping and eating habits.
This isn't peculiar to Texas, as the same thing happened in Utah.
The changes are mostly due to the fact that we are gluten free, as well as on a nutrient-dense diet, but also because gluten-free friendly food choices seem to come and go around here.
For example, when we first moved to Texas finding Sam's Choice gluten-free white bread for hubby's lunches was quite easy.
Today?
It's only available at our local Super Walmart. Other Walmarts in our area don't carry it.
Same for hubby's hard apple cider.
When we first moved here, Angry Orchard was available at Walmart, Kroger, and WinCo. Now, it's only available at WinCo. Walmart and Kroger have both stopped carrying it.
Occasionally, we can find a 6-pack of Angry Orchard, but it comes with a super-inflated price over purchasing it by the case.
The consequences for that?
We sometimes have to go to three or four different stores to pick up everything that we need for the week, especially since we are very fond of Kroger's Carbmaster low-carb yogurt.
This means I do a lot of pre-planning now, and looking ahead, that I didn't have to do before.
At the same time, hubby has decided that he doesn't want to live within the structure of a tight food budget any more.
He wants to live comfortably, rather than sticking to a particular dollar amount, week after week. He wants me to buy what I need to buy to make our food taste good, without worrying about how much it costs.
So, our food dollars have relaxed a bit over what they've been in the past. I'm no longer trying to keep our spending below $100 a week and have no idea what the bottom line comes to by the time we reach the end of the month.
We just let the cost fall where it falls now.
However, hubby is addicted to checking out the sales papers that come each week, and we keep our food spending realistic, so food costs are still practical, and we pretty much live on what's on sale from week to week.
If we overspend one week, it averages itself out the next week because we spend less.
Our food habits are just second nature now.
This won't be true for everyone who's trying to do Keto on a budget, so in this post, I'm going to share some of the things I've learned over the years about budgeting to help you make your Keto meals more affordable for you.
Get Your Head in the Game: Accept the Challenge
This is really important.
Don't listen to those who tell you that Keto is too expensive. They don't know what they are talking about. Keto is no more expensive than any other weight-loss diet.
You don't have to eat expensive steaks, shrimp, or even bacon to lose weight on Keto.
Plus, you aren't eating more meat and protein than you were before, unless you were protein deficient and pigging out mostly on carbs.
Which obviously, can happen.
I'm not saying it can't.
But the average ketogenic diet provides only 15 to 25 percent of your daily calories in protein foods. Sometimes, a little bit more if you happen to be extremely insulin resistant or need a higher protein diet.
This comes to about 12 to 16 ounces of protein foods per person per day. That's 7 pounds total of boneless meat, poultry, fish, eggs, cheese, and nuts per week.
If you set a ceiling of $2 per pound, for protein, that's $14 for the week.
Think of it this way:
You're leaving out all of the bread, crackers, cookies, chips, and cake you were spending your hard-earned dollars on before going Keto and substituting healthy produce and low-carb condiments for the junk.
That's going to be cheaper than before.
What you need to wrap your mind around?
Most people are controlled or led by their emotions. This is how rumors and myths about Keto take on life. When someone touches your emotions with a suggestion, you're more likely to cast your reasoning aside for something that “sounds” true, even if it's not.
To be sustainable, a ketogenic lifestyle takes both your mind and heart coming together to make cost-effective choices within your personal budget's limits, so don't just assume that everything you hear (even from me) is true.
Get your head in the game.
Wake up your reasoning power.
Be willing to test what you hear or read.
You don't have to spend anywhere near what hubby and I do for food right now. Fifty dollars each is comfortable for us, but I could quite easily cut that food budget in half, if need be -- which I've done before when hubby lost his job.
I didn't bail on my Keto Diet when times were hard. I just cut out the frills and kept on going. So try to see your Keto meals as a mental challenge to rise up to, rather than a depressive, expensive lifestyle.
See the truth:
Keto is a weight-loss tool or strategy that you can use to help you reach your current weight-loss goal.
A Keto Diet is only as expensive as you make it.
Keto on a Budget Isn't as Difficult as You Think
Keep it simple.
That's the main key to doing Keto on a budget. Don't complicate your life by trying to recreate the carby diet you were following before. That will cost way too much and won't help you move toward your weight-loss goals.
What you want to do is look at the protein and vegetable choices you have to choose from, and then go with the ones that are best suited to your tastes and lifestyle.
This doesn't mean that you can't have a few exceptions.
We don't always go with the cheapest choice.
But it does mean you'll need to start thinking of your budget in terms of balance, rather than absolutes.
Set your budget.
If that's $50, then divide that $50 budget by the number of meals you need for the week.
At $50, three meals a day is $7.14 per day or $2.38 per meal.
If your budget is $25 a week, then divide that $25 budget by 7 days.
That's $3.57 per day, or $1.19 per meal.
I like to think in terms of averages.
Averages gives you the advantage of going over your daily budget by consciously going under budget to compensate.
For example, if you buy something that costs a little more than your average protein budget, such as pork spareribs, then you'll have to eat more chicken that week to make up for it.
If you buy asparagus because you love it, then you need to be willing to buy something else that brings your budget back in line with reality. A can of green beans, perhaps.
So What Makes Keto Meals Expensive?
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| Specialty ingredients raises the cost of your ketogenic meal, but so does cheese, butter, and heavy cream |
Before you can tailor your ketogenic diet to fit your personal food budget, you need to know what makes Keto meals expensive. It really isn't all of those rib steaks, bacon-burgers, shrimp, and avocados.
It's something far more invisible.
Like . . . dairy.
Dairy is as addicting as wheat.
Did you know that?
It competes for the same pleasure centers in the brain as wheat and sugar does.
It sets off an insulin spike, which is why it's so satisfying, and contains a lot of fat and calories for the amount of carbs you get. But then, that's why dairy, such as butter, cheese, and heavy cream, are so popular within the low-carb community.
They increase satiety.
But also make you want more. And, therefore, spend more.
Cheese is only about a carb per ounce, so it's used liberally and with a heavy hand on Keto. Many, many ketogenic recipes like the Fat-Head low-carb pizza above contain cheese, butter, and heavy cream. Lots of it.
However, cost per ounce for cheese, when compared to meat?
Cheese will run you between 3 and 6 dollars a pound, depending on the size of the package.
Are you willing to pay that much for meat?
Probably, not – if you're on a tight budget.
Likewise, a simple can of tuna – another popular low-carb staple – has now shrunk from 6 or 7 ounces down to 5, (which is only 4 ounces of drained meat), but still costs between 95 cents and a dollar.
That comes to about 4 dollars for 16 ounces of tuna. Sometimes, quite a bit more if you're partial to albacore.
Now, compare these cheese and tuna prices to chicken leg quarters in a 10-pound bag at Walmart or Kroger for $5.99.
After discarding the extra skin and bones, the chicken legs will yield 4 or 5 pounds of boneless meat for 6 bucks, about 10 servings, depending on the size of the chicken leg.
For the two of us, I get 5 meals for 6 bucks from a 10-pound bag of chicken leg quarters. That's just over a dollar a meal for the two of us.
We eat a lot of chicken.
The key to maximizing your savings on Keto is to know how much boneless protein you're actually getting for your dollar. Hamburger or plain boneless chicken breast is much easier to determine quantity wise, since you don't have extra skin or bones to take into account.
For that reason, I like to look at our meat purchases in terms of how many servings do we get for that dollar, rather than cost per pound. One leg quarter, two thighs, three chicken legs, half a boneless chicken breast, and so on.
Are Eggs Really Cheaper than Other Proteins?
After watching egg prices for the past couple of years, I've come to the conclusion that the prices you can expect to pay are seasonal. This is probably why low carbers often refer to eggs as a cheap staple.
Prices run from a dollar, or less, for a dozen eggs during the summer to 10 dollars for a 5-dozen carton during the winter.
The key is to consider how much absolute protein you're actually getting for those dozen eggs.
On the average, protein per ounce of meat is about 6 to 7 grams, so 1 egg is equal to about an ounce of meat.
This means a dozen eggs equals about 12 ounces of protein, 2 or 3 servings, so whether eggs are a cheap Keto staple for you depends on the time of year and how many eggs you're eating per meal.
Where You Buy your Food Matters
Geographical area really matters when it comes to food prices. Here, in Texas, we are able to take advantage of a number of Hispanic grocery stores in our area that we didn't have in Utah.
Hispanic stores are much cheaper sources of meat, poultry, and fish than your main-chain grocery stores.
The meat is older, tougher, and needs to be tenderized and marinated before cooking and serving, but it's worth the extra time and gas for us to chase down the sales because we can get chicken breast for as little as a dollar a pound, and often chicken legs for less than 50 cents a pound.
Pork chops are also less than a dollar a pound on most weeks.
The competition spills over onto our local main-chain grocery stores – Kroger, WalMart, Winco, and Albertson's – who have to compete with the Hispanic markets for meat, as well as produce.
This means that main-store prices, when time is at a premium for us due to hubby's work schedule, can be a great bargain, too.
Avocados are often only 25 to 50 cents at Walmart. Chicken breast runs less than 2 dollars a pound now, and marked-down meats at Kroger can really be a bargain.
Hamburger is an exception for us.
We always buy it at Costco, despite the cost. It's 88 percent lean and runs $2.75 to $2.99 a pound. This isn't pink slime. It's regular hamburger, which I don't react to like I do with other brands.
The trick is to know what's available in your area, so you can take advantage of who has the lowest prices.
However, you also have to take the price of gas into consideration when you're thinking about store hopping. If you spend more on gas than you save by going to more than one store, you'll have to come up with a different plan.
For example, sometimes, we stop off at Kroger or Winco when we're coming home from visiting my son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter over the weekend, especially if we only need yogurt, ice cream, or hard apple cider.
On Keto, You're Satisfied with Less Food
If you're new to low-carb eating, thinking about consuming only 4 to 6 ounces of meat and a cup of steamed vegetables or small side salad, even with full-fat dressing, can be a scary thought.
However, once you've entered into the state of dietary ketosis, you'll be satisfied with far less food.
Keto makes you less hungry than a high-carb diet does because you don't go into that intense push from the body to eat when your glycogen first begins to run low. Instead, the body simply withdraws what it needs from your fat cells and life goes on.
In fact, some people are so satisfied on Keto that they can only eat once or twice a day. Many say they forget to eat lunch. Less food means you're going to be spending less for groceries, so don't fight against the lack of appetite.
You Don't Need Specialty Ingredients to Get Thin
- Bullet-proof coffee
- Coconut oil
- Grass-fed butter
- Atkins bars and shakes
- Sugar-free candy
- Carbquick Baking Mix
- Organic produce
Dietary fats are not a goal you have to reach.
The amount of fat in your diet is an upper limit.
It's much better to start off using a standard low-carb meal template, and then branch out from there after you've seen how your body is going to respond to Keto.
What do I mean by template?
Here's an example of a standard low-carb meal:
- 4 to 6 ounces protein foods
- 1-1/2 cups steamed vegetables with butter
- OR 2 cups salad with full-fat dressing
- diet soda, coffee, tea, or water
Six ounces of meat is a little more than 1/3 of a pound, which is only 66 cents for a serving of protein at $2 per pound.
Frozen vegetables come in huge family-size bags for $5.89, but for comparison, even half of a small bag of veggies will only set you back about 50 cents.
That comes to $1.16 per meal for protein and vegetables, not counting the butter or salad dressing.
Get Back to Keto Basics
Figuring out how to do Keto on a budget isn't complicated when you go back to basics and think in terms of how much meat and vegetables you need to get through the week.
No matter which low-carb diet you're following, it's going to be basically meat with salad and/or vegetables. Plus, a little bit of added fat for flavor.
Pick out your proteins. Add your vegetables. And then fill in with your low-carb condiments.
You don't need specialty ingredients.
You don't need to wrap everything in bacon.
And you don't need to drown everything in melted cheese.
In fact, you'll probably lose weight a whole lot faster if you don't.
Additional Resources
10 Strategies for Eating Keto on a Budget
12 Recipes for Cheap Keto Meals
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