In our culture obsessed with image, there’s a new fad diet every week. Many are legit. Some are awful. With our never ending quest for fitness, is it possible to be healthy and not blow your budget?
If you’re like me, you’ve tried a dozen of different diets in recent years. I’ve done paleo, mediterranean, Whole30, THM, bone broth, intermittent fasting, and most recently keto.
What I found is virtually every one of these diets subscribe to the same core tenets of healthy living. Each diet is merely a variation of time tested practices.
As I gear up for my next health kick (a repeat of keto with intermittent fasting), I remember how much ‘dieting’ costs. Frequent trips to Whole Foods and specialty ingredients from Amazon sure add up, don’t they?
However, after some more thought I realized that maybe diets don’t cost as much as we think they do. Simply putting these core principles into practice may actually save us money–both directly and indirectly.
Here’s a look at some of the most common ways to get healthy and how they could also benefit your cash flow.
1. Drink more water
We all know the health perks of consuming more H2O but often forget the financial impact of choosing water over other drinks.
Take, for example, a typical dinner for two at a nice restaurant. Ordering a soft drink usually costs a few bucks. Beers go for $5 to $8 while cocktails and other mixed drinks run anywhere from $7 to over $15 a pop. Glasses of wine are priced similarly to cocktails but can increase dramatically depending on the establishment and type of wine.
By simply opting for water in lieu of the fizzy stuff, you can easily shave $6 – $30 from your tab.
Likewise, if specialty coffee is a mainstay in your morning routine, cutting that out can make a big dent in your monthly expenses.
Now, we’re not talking about the fancy bottled stuff from Fiji or wherever they’re advertised to come from (that’s a whole other blog post for another day). But routinely swapping your go-to drinks for a refreshing glass of water can go a long way in scaling back extraneous spending.
2. Exercise
Yes I know, exercise is boring. Yet, it’s necessary in our sedimentary culture.
In addition to getting fit, there’s a slew of less obvious benefits from working out.
For starters, exercise increases productivity and mental acuity. Heaps of research articles and books have been written on this correlation. More productivity and alertness allows us to get more done in less time, boosting effectiveness and profitability.
When I was preparing for the CFP board exam last summer, I noticed that if I ran for 15-20 minutes before sitting down to study, I was much more alert and ready to absorb the admittedly dry material. I started scheduling my runs right before long study sessions. I even considered running the morning of the exam (I didn’t end up doing so but I did pass!).
According to this article, exercise also reduces the frequency of absences from work, minimizing potential income and opportunities lost for advancement. The article also quotes a study from the Journal of Labor Research reporting that regular exercise boosts earnings by 6% for men and over 10% for women. We’re obsessed with image, remember?
Again, you don’t need a high-end gym membership. Going to a local Y or jogging at a public park works too. Pretty much any kind of exercise will do–the key is just to do it.
3. Eat clean
Although clean, wholesome eating is in vogue, it’s more challenging than ever for the average American household to eat at home. With increased living costs and longer work days, the scramble for meals often results in eating out.
Recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts average household spending on dining out at $3,154 in 2016–or 44% of overall food spending. That’s up 5% from the previous year (which is up 8% from the year before that).
So, we spend a lot of money on prepared food. But how does eating clean help cut costs?
The most obvious is the (often drastic) cost savings from cooking at home versus the inflated prices of dining out.
Other ways clean eating can potentially affect your wallet include:
1) Giving you more energy to do things that you might normally pay someone else to do (i.e. mowing the lawn, house cleaning, etc.).
2) Helping you feel fuller longer, in effect curbing urges to snack and the costs associated with frequent trips to the vending machine.
3) Boosting your mood and mental health which helps to curtail unhealthy spending habits.
4) Improving your alertness so you can be more productive at work.
While convenient and often cheap, processed foods take a toll on us. They often have the opposite effect from whole foods. They make us feel bloated and sluggish, triggering extra expenses on things like coffee and sugary treats just to get us through the day.
Fresh meats and produce can cost more than prepackaged meals in the freezer aisle (though you can certainly eat organic on a budget). But ultimately, it pays off when you factor in these additional costs.
4. Sleep better
Sleep is having a moment. Apparently, our culture is undergoing a sleep revolution.
In addition to the many health and financial benefits already mentioned, improved sleep helps us avoid expenses in a couple of other ways.
First, adequate sleep helps our immunity. This research study found that people who slept less than 7 hours each night over a 14-day period were almost 3 times as likely to get sick than people who consistently slept more than 8 hours a night. Illness disrupts our flow of productivity and also costs money to treat. Uninterrupted sleep = uninterrupted wellness.
Sleeping also reduces stress. When we’re stressed and anxious, our judgment is impaired so we’re more prone to make poor choices. Like stress eating, we can resort to unnecessary shopping trips and extraneous purchases to cope with stress. We may get so consumed by it that we fail to carry out financial responsibilities like paying bills on time, resulting in late fees and hits to our credit score. Sufficient sleep can help alleviate many of those woes.
Two birds with one stone
As it turns out, healthy living doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. It can actually save us money or help us avoid potential costs. By making good choices to be physically fit, we can simultaneously improve our financial wellbeing. We’ll enhance our waistlines–and our wallets, too.By making good choices to be physically fit, we can simultaneously improve our financial wellbeing. We'll enhance our waistlines--and our wallets, too. Click To Tweet
