Our Secret Weapon to Eating Healthier and Saving Money + FREE Printables!

This post is a little different than what I normally share on here but I thought it might be fun to branch out from crochet hooks and yarn to talk about something all of us do everyday, at least 3 times… and that is eat! I always find it interesting to learn how other people meal plan, go about grocery shopping, and favorite go to recipes. Sometimes I get into a slump where cooking at home just seems like too much at the end of a long work day, but right now I am also at the point where no food that I would go out a get would be any better.

I designed these printables to inspire us to make more meals at home with whole, healthy ingredients and to save money while we are at it. Trisden and I recently calculated the amount of money we spend each week on takeout/restaurant food and let me tell you, that number was a little scary. It looks like we will soon need a credit card to meet the expenses. Don’t get me wrong, we are lucky to be in the financial situation that we are in, but we know that it could be even better if we avoided spending money on takeaways and whatnot. Though it is fine to do once in a while, we don’t want our finances to be affected by something that could’ve easily been so avoided.

The topic of money has been on our mind a lot recently. We are always looking for ways to make more money. From garage sales and taking online surveys, to looking for something like these Syncrobit Helium Miner buy options and mining for crypto, there are many ways that this can be achieved in this day and age. That way, we won’t feel as much pressure when it comes to spending some money here and there on takeaways and restaurant food. Although, we are trying really hard to be good! Looking back, these numbers were definitely a wake-up call that was needed to snap us out of our bad habits and give us a big nudge to take the time to go grocery shopping and cook at home.

In addition to saving money, cooking more meals at home has contributed to an increase of energy and has been a huge mood booster! I know that it is so much better for our health and this is something both Trisden and I are keen to improve. Speaking of energy, we have heard about dietary supplements that contain plenty of the good stuff that our bodies will love; most of the ones I came across, like these Morning Complete ingredients can work for pretty much everything – from improving digestion to upping energy levels, and it goes all the way down to working on cell function. All of this sounds great, doesn’t it? So we are also looking at finding a supplement to take alongside our improved diet in the hope that we will not only feel better, but also lose a little weight. I know there are companies like SS Nutra who specialise in manufacturing custom dietary supplements and so there should be lots available from retailers – we just need to take some time to look. However, for now we are really benefiting from cooking at home more and generally eating better food! Believe it or not we were doing well for two straight weeks with cooking every night (during the week). Our goal is to cook at least five nights per week with a two meal allowance to eat out. I know that two weeks may sound sad, but hey, at least it’s a step in the right direction! We got out of the groove this past week with my brother visiting because there are so many good restaurants around our town so I had to share them with my brother while he was here :).

This week we have jumped back on the bandwagon, and I am excited to use this meal planning system to get us organized. The way I plan to use this system will go as follows:

Plan out weekly meals for the month. A week for us would probably look like a homemade meal for Monday – Thursday, dinner out on Friday and Saturday night, and a homemade meal on Sunday.

Click here to download the Meal Plan: Month at a Glance Sheet

Each week, fill out the weekly meal plan sheet with the planned meals, ingredients and recipe notes. This worksheet also makes for a great resource to document your favorite recipes with the rating system under each recipe! Just circle the number 1 – 5 with 1 being totally gross and 5 being totally awesome!