Today we offer tips to strengthen your financial health and master food shopping on a budget.

How we spend money affects all aspects of our lives, including our mental state. The stress caused by monetary difficulties leads to severe physical and psychological diseases. The good news is that, by more consciously managing our income, we can avoid these problems, and most importantly, we will gain harmony with ourselves with greater ease.

Create a personal budget

A budget is a powerful tool that will help you consider all your income and expenses, look for problem areas, more reasonably organise spending, and effectively accumulate capital. You can do this the old-fashioned way in a regular Excel table, in a notebook, or by downloading a convenient application on a smartphone.

It will be most suitable to break the costs of groups.

Here is an example of how your list should look and what groups of expenses can be included in it:

* food (products at home, food in the office, coffee on the way to work);

* road (transportation costs, expenses for your car, such as gasoline, parking, insurance, and repair);

* health (medical insurance, doctors, medicines, vitamins);

* financial obligations (bank cards, accumulative account, loans);

* Education (payment for training at a university, courses – including online, textbooks and developing literature);

* sport (subscription to a fitness club or yoga studio, sportswear);

* Appearance (buying clothes, shoes, accessories, cosmetics and perfumes, manicures, hairdresser, masseur, etc.);

* entertainment (buying books, magazines and applications, dinners with friends, film tickets and concerts);

* Gifts (relatives, friends, colleagues);

* children;

* pets;

* Miscellaneous (unaccounted expenses that do not fall into any points).

Make detailed shopping lists

It doesn’t matter whether you are going to the supermarket or the farmer’s market – always compose in advance and take a detailed list of purchases with you. You can print out beautiful versions of shopping lists from the Internet and keep them at home in a prominent place (for example, on the refrigerator) or download a particular application for a smartphone.

 We also advise you to conduct detailed lists of everything you already have at home. 

Keep a diary of how you feel

Write your emotional state before heading to the grocery store. Countless shopping can be a desire to improve your mood, relieve tension after a hard working day, and be a distraction from boredom

Food staples

Fortunately, local products are no less tasty and valuable than their overseas counterparts but are much cheaper.

We are enthusiastic and interested in new foods and superfoods that appear in the international healthy nutrition market. But we are sorry that often people ignore beautiful vegetables, fruits, cereals and animals that have traditionally been used by people of their region, remarkably support health and which, of course, should be included in the diet.

Local products have many advantages: the lack of long transportation, which helps to save them fresh without additional processing, the affordable price, plus our bodies best learn precisely what was used by our ancestors for many years. A healthy diet does not have to be difficult and expensive: many vegetables, fruits and cereals familiar to us contain no fewer nutrients than overseas mangoes. And it seems that deliciously cooked foods we have known from childhood feed us both physically and emotionally. 

We will tell you about six affordable super-products of the middle lane which should be included in your diet.

1. Cross -colour vegetables

Cruciferous, or cabbage, include a vast number of various vegetables, many of which are familiar and were eaten from ancient times. White and red-legged cabbage, broccoli, trough, turnip, radishes, coloured cabbage, Brussels cabbage and others are among the most applicable existing vegetables. A variety of nutrient compositions covers most of the human body’s needs in vitamins, minerals, fibre and partly in protein. Vegetables of the cabbage family have potent anti-cancer properties that help prevent the appearance of this disease and reduce the number of malignant cells in the active phase. For women’s health, cabbage is also beneficial in terms of hormonal balance – they help normalise estrogen levels in the liver and blood, removing excess and establishing female health.

2. Fresh greens

What could be tastier than fresh fragrant greenery – parsley, dill, cilantro, sorrel, spinach? This is the most helpful superfood, and it is so accessible and familiar, but the properties of greenery are underestimated by many. Cilantro, for example, provides the body with many necessary minerals and vitamins and easily digestible protein and removes heavy metals from the body. Parsley helps to remove excess fluid and eliminates oedema; dandelion and chicory support the health of the liver and gall bladder, the entire gastrointestinal tract and health in general. If you do not like to eat greens just like that, you can add it to the smoothie, finely chop it and interfere with cereals and soups or make sauces.

3. Chicken eggs

The eggs have long had an ambiguous reputation: many accused them of adverse effects on metabolism and cholesterol, but modern studies argue that cholesterol contained in the yolk does not significantly impact blood cholesterol. The benefits of eggs are difficult to overestimate: egg protein is a protein standard and one of the most easily digestible types of protein. The yolk contains many beneficial vitamins and nutrients (in particular lecithin) necessary for the healthy function of the brain and liver. According to recent research, we do not urge you to eat eggs from morning to evening, but six to seven quality eggs per week will bring you and your health only benefits.

4. Fatty fish

Fatty fish is another beauty product that will enrich your diet and support the body in balance. Many equate it exclusively with salmon, but good fats are also contained in many other species, including cod, halibut, flounder, and herring. Using such fish two to three times a week significantly reduces the likelihood of cardiovascular disease, diseases, nervous system disorders and metabolism. Give preference to wild fish and, if possible, buy chilled or freshly frozen.

5. Root crops

Root crops are another underestimated species of vegetables, including beets and potatoes and carrots, pumpkin, trough, turnip, jerk, celery and parsley. All these products are traditional but, unfortunately, have been forgotten recently. But root crops are an excellent source of carbohydrates and soft fibre, which is healing for the gastrointestinal tract and is perfect for people who want to reduce the number of grains and cereals in their diet.

6. Buckwheat

Buckwheat is one of the most valuable cereals, and its regular use prevents many diseases. Buckwheat is a pseudo that does not contain gluten, rich in vegetable protein and iron, and is easily absorbed and digested. Buckwheat has anti-cancer properties, normalises metabolism, supports digestion and supplies the body with many essential vitamins and minerals. We love crumbly porridge of brown buckwheat with mushrooms, and green buckwheat can be used to prepare healthy granola, and added to smoothies and salads.

“Out of sight, out of mind!”

This statement is directly related to our nutrition. To prove that the amount of its consumption depends on the location of food, scientists decided to put chocolate sweets in transparent bowls in one group of secretaries, and the other were placed in dark dishes. As a result, those who saw chocolate sweets ate 71% more than those who could not see them. 

This fact proves that finding food in our field of view pushes us to excess consumption when the body does not need food. Outpatient your body: don’t overbuy food.

Refuse diversity

Studies prove that by having a wide selection of food, a person eats 23% more. This phenomenon is called “sensual fullness.” The idea based on it is that we become full after we feel the same tastes and smells many times. Accordingly, if we eat many products with different taste characteristics, we need to consume more to feel the long-awaited saturation. We urge you to force this principle to work for yourself: be consistent with your grocery list.

Buy food according to need, not in bulk.

Another external feature that affects overeating is the size of the packaging of products. Indeed, cooking from large packs makes us eat 20-25 % more than usual. Researchers confirmed this hypothesis: they gave the first group of subjects a large package of spaghetti, beef minced meat and tomato sauce, and the second group had packs of small sizes. It turned out that those who used food from large packages prepared 23% more than the second group of experimental participants. So replace large packs with small analogues to help yourself observe the measure in food and, therefore, look and feel better and spend less.

If we purchase products for a week in advance and put off food for the future, this leads us to excessive consumption. If you want to live on a budget, you can have a great time walking to the supermarket daily and buying precisely the number of products you usually consume daily. If that is not an option, try to purchase food 5 to 7 days in advance.

These are some holistic methods to approach food shopping from financial, emotional, practical and theoretical aspects that we wanted to share today.