OK, so I disappeared for a while - sorry about that. I won't do it again...I promise. I have a new weight loss/exercise buddy. He is one of my very best friends and just knowing that he is reading this helps keep me motivated and honest :)
Not much happened in the time I was away. First I lost .8 pounds (yea), then I stayed the same (boo), but I'm not giving up.
We went a little crazy spending money this month. We have a $75 a week budget for groceries which I tend to think of as a $300 a month budget. Pretty much the same thing, expect when I think of it in monthly terms we tend to buy a lot of groceries at the beginning of the month and have nothing at the end of the month. I know what you are thinking: $75 a week is a lot to spend on groceries, and it is, until you realize what we spend that money on. My husband and I are committed to feeding ourselves and our daughter wholesome, unprocessed, organic food. Now you see why $75 a week is not so much. Some people could spend more than that on organic apples in a week.
We are part of "community supported agriculture" from a local, organic farm in our area. Every two weeks we receive a box of local, organic veggies. Each box sets up back $40, so that's $80 a month gone. Then there is the egg issue. Our daughter eats about 6 eggs every day, and because we are committed to organic food and each dozen eggs costs $4, that can add up really quickly.
Anyway, I digress. My point is that I have to be very careful with my budgeting in order to buy all these organic veggies and still have money left for things like protein and carbs :)
One thing I've discovered is incredibly helpful is planing out my meals for the week. One of my favorite little weight watchers sayings is: "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." Its catchy, cute, and true. When I plan my meals for the week not only to I spend less money, but I eat more at home, and eat healthier.
The organic food quandry is an interesting one. One must weigh the social benefit of the extra dollars one spends to buy organic against the other social benefits those dollars can buy. I don't have any firm figures, but I do know (for a FACT, and I get this knowledge in part from my parents' volunteer organization: Great Lakes Earth Institute - GLEI.org) that the carbon footprint from buying organic, say, oranges from, say, Argentina is much greater than buying pesticide-ridden fruit grown within Washington state (as long as they weren't shipped outside the state for packaging and processing as so many goods are - buying direct from a farmer avoids this problem altogether). It's the shipping that really burns up our world's resources and puts pollutants in the air. (I know you know... I just mention it 'cause I think of it.) One must also wonder, since big business has turned to organic produce as a niche product, how much of the price we pay for organic is a real cost for the greater amounts of spoilage and how much is them jacking up the price because they can, because people perceive mass-produced organic as equivalent to direct-from-the-farmer organic, and are willing to pay the same price for each.
ReplyDeleteI know you know how to dumpster dive... you just need some buddies who are old hat. Try the couchsurfing Seattle or Dumpster diving groups.
What else do I have to say about organic? Um... Oh! I wanted to suggest you write a post comparing what you would buy if you weren't worrying about organic labels (etc.) to what you actually spend and see if there really is that big a difference between the two sums. If there is, think about what other things you could do for your health/the world's health with that money. There might be nothing better than what you're doing, but there might, and I think it'd be a fun exercise... and if there's nothing better, maybe those hard numbers would convince some other people to follow your lead!
Love,
Your Exercise/Weightloss Buddy