Am i wasting my money?!!?

i haven't really done a food diary this week but its all been chosen from the magazines 7 day menu.

That's a really expensive way of doing SW. It's designed to showcase the amount and variety of food you can eat on SW rather than how to do it on a budget.

The 7 day plan means you have to buy in a lot of new ingredients, you can't take advantage of special offers in the shops, and you can't use leftovers from one meal to make another because they are all individual meals using a lot of different ingredients.

When you go to class and start to get your head around it it will be much easier (not to mention cheaper) to plan you own meals for the week.

For instance, you could get a big box of mince, cook it on day 1 for cottage pie, add tomatoes and herbs on day 2 for spag bol, and then pep it up with chilli beans on day 3 for a chilli with rice. Or when I cook pasta/rice for an evening meal I cook a bit extra. Throw in some veggies and a dressing and you are sorted for lunch the next day. The 7-day menu plan from the website doesn't do things like this. It's 21 standalone meals and that is why it is so expensive.
 
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Circles mentioned above about cooking extra for leftovers - I always try and do this so I have a lunch ready for the next day. Saves faffing around in the morning too when you can just grab a box out of the fridge :D As others said it takes a while to get your head around how to buy but it can be done cheaply.
 
It's also a good idea to go to 2 or even 3 supermarkets just for a nosey around to see how much the normal things you buy are.. then when you are doing your weekly shop, you can save by buying some stuff in Asda and others in Aldi.

@ GettingFitAt50.. Does the veg go off because you buy so much because it's on offer and you don't get a chance to use it.. that happened to me a few times.. Now if I buy in bulk, I par-boil the veg and then freeze it.. It's cheaper than buying pre-frozen veg!

I spend €180 a month in Tesco €50 a month in the Butchers and about €50 on Fruit and Veg a month and about €25 on picking up bits that don't keep(bread, milk etc). To feed two of us.. we never ever throw out food so that's just over €300 a month, about €70 a week or about £60.. And I live in Ireland where everything is nearly twice the price as it is in the UK so you can deffo do it.. It just takes getting used to
 
gettingfitat50 said:
I find Aldi and Lidl fruit and veg soon go off.

I find you eat it up so quickly that this is not an issue anymore. Hence 90% of my veg being smartprice
 
Woohoo - I'm loving the ideas on this thread :) If you want to make it work, it can work :)
 
I hardly ever make stuff from the magazines. I wouldn't be able to afford it! I get recipes off here and say once or twice a week

totally agree here hun, i did a reciepe from the sw mag and i nipped asda to get the ingrediants for that 1 meal for 2 and it came to £7, so if that cost me £7 for 1 meal and youve done a shop for the 7 days planner , no wonder it cost you a fortune?!?!

once you get the basics and you keep stocked tinned tomartos ect , its not to bad as along as you get the veg and fruit on offer , or nip aldi :cool:
 
theres me and my partner and he eats what i eat , as well as a few extras bits and we shop at asda and we spend £30 a week and have loads of stuff
i do our shopping online, so i can see how much im spending as i go along and also you see the offers alot better , than in store:cool:

then every 2 weeks i go the butchers at the market a get a £15 meat pack thats usually for a family of 4, i split it all out and, chop it up and re bag it and freeze it,
 
thanks for all the advice guys, its really helped :)
 
Soooooooo.......... are you rejoining tomorrow ?
 
i want to but iv got a few things to think about. I was doing exante shakes before and iv got a months worth left (£100's worth) so im thinking of using them up first then rejoining SW. Not sure yet though.
 
yeah iv had that this week just gone.
 
Best of luck!
 
thanks, got till half 7 tomorrow to decide what to do!!
 
I think you may as well just use your shakes as you don't sound like you're in the right place to start your SW journey at the moment. When you do start it you won't find it a quick fix. It's the chance to re-educate yourself about food and learn about your own eating habits (why you eat what you eat when you eat it, so that you can stop any self-sabotage). It's supposed to be a change for life, not something you're going to do for 2 weeks and then see massive weight losses so you can skip on to a different meal replacement fad, or have a break from 'dieting' and eat normally and put it all back on.
I think SW is fantastic, but you have to be committed to cooking and eating healthily in the longer term for it to work really well.
 
Lucky7 said:
I think you may as well just use your shakes as you don't sound like you're in the right place to start your SW journey at the moment. When you do start it you won't find it a quick fix. It's the chance to re-educate yourself about food and learn about your own eating habits (why you eat what you eat when you eat it, so that you can stop any self-sabotage). It's supposed to be a change for life, not something you're going to do for 2 weeks and then see massive weight losses so you can skip on to a different meal replacement fad, or have a break from 'dieting' and eat normally and put it all back on.
I think SW is fantastic, but you have to be committed to cooking and eating healthily in the longer term for it to work really well.

What she said. It won't work if you aren't commited to it & have the right expectations from the start.
 
Also, be prepared that changing from exante to SW means that there's a chance you'll gain a little in the first week as your body adjusts to more food. Stick with it and it WILL come off. Good luck.
 
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