Skip to main content

Saving Almost $800 a Year on Snacks

It may not be fashionable in the low-carb world, but I like to snack. I feel better when I snack. I don't feel good when I eat big meals and don't know how people put away three-egg bacon-cheese omelets with a bullet-proof coffee. The good thing about low-carb snacking is that by definition, you avoid eating junk like potato chips and fruit pies. The bad news is that low-carb snacks from the convenience store are expensive.

Time was when the only two kinds of coffee I drank were free and home-brewed. When I realized cream gave me problems, I started taking it black and then realized that the office coffee was terrible. But the little shop on the first floor made a wonderful cup for $2.11. An equally wonderful home-brewed cup is about 12 cents. Sleeping in an extra ten minutes, the time it takes to brew a 12-cent cup of coffee, is costing me almost $500 a year. I've set my alarm earlier.

The convenience store sells Kind bars for around $2.50 and large diet Dr. Pepper for $1.84; for me, that's 92 cents for one serving of soda. The grocery store sells diet cola and root beer $2.99 a six-pack, or 50 cents a serving. From now on, I'm bringing my own soda to work (and supporting a company I own stock in). That's $100 a year in savings. Yes, I could just drink water, but realistically, I want a soda when I'm stressed out at work, which is often.

I had a feeling I could make snacks similar to a Kind bar for less money. I made maple paleonola from 500 Paleo Recipes today, weighing the ingredients, and figured out it costs 90 cents a serving. Bonus: each serving has almost 400 calories (including 35 grams of fat) compared to 200 calories in a Kind nut delight bar. Ninety cents is cheaper than what 400 calories worth of free-range eggs costs me; all those nuts only seem expensive. Savings: about $192 per year.

Total savings from making, brewing and bringing my own: $792 a year.

Comments

tess said…
no kidding! we use premium ingredients, but in the end we get a better quality product with REAL nutritional value.... when you think of what that "doritos and a coke" or "starbucks and muffin" snack costs in money AND health, you wonder how you could have been so stupid for so long.

if you function best on smaller, more frequent meals ... that's what you should do!
Lori Miller said…
Suze Orman has always gone on about spending money on coffee, and I agree with her. If you're getting a fancy coffee every day (read: liquid sugar), you're really doing yourself a disservice.
Galina L. said…
At least you have the thing to drop from your diet (like snacking) if you need to .
No, I can't eat 3 eggs+bacon+bulletproof coffee in one setting myself, such coffee is a meal.
No-snacking took me from a weight-loss plateau for a while.
Lori Miller said…
The odd thing is, I'm not even hungry for lunch today, let alone a snack.
Guess we all have to plan our life/meals/exercise, sleep patterns etc that suit our life. For me the start of the day is so important. I find if I have a cooked breakfast for example eggs, bacon, mushrooms it keeps me going through to lunch etc. I am not a 'snacky' person, but whole-heartily agree if you can take time to make your own it is better than shop bought.

All the best Jan
Lori Miller said…
The maple paleonola is pretty tasty. And it's nice to not be rushed getting ready for work in the morning, since I get up a little earlier.

Popular posts from this blog

Not Only Cheaper, But Easier

A while back, I wrote about saving money on break time coffee and snacks. I haven't done very well putting it into practice. But a post by James Clear today got me thinking about it again: Warren Buffett uses a two-list system to prioritize things. Check it out --and follow the instructions. Using Buffett's two-list system, two of the goals I ended up with were taking care of myself and saving $400 more per month than I already am. As I said, I've been wanting to save money, and the system made me really focus on this. I came up with 11 money-saving ideas, six of which had to do with food. Buying hamburger in bulk. Ranch Foods Direct sells one-pound packages of 80% lean pastured ground beef in bundles of 20 for a lot less than Whole Foods. Sprouts only carries super-lean beef that's grass-fed, and it's more expensive, too.  Not driving to Whole Foods. Whole Foods is out of my way, and saving a weekly trip saves gas. Coffee at home, tea at work. Tea is fr...

Palpitations Gone with Iron

Thanks to my internet friend Larcana, who alerted me to the connection between iron deficiency and palpitations, I doubled down on my iron supplements and, for good measure, washed them down with Emergen-C. It's a cold medicine with a mega-dose of vitamin C, plus B vitamins and minerals. I don't think vitamin C does anything for a cold (a friend bought the stuff and left it at my house the last time she visited), but vitamin C does help iron absorption. After doubling up on iron in the last three days, I feel back to normal. (I'd already been taking quite a bit of magnesium and potassium, so I probably had sufficient levels of those.) How did I get so low on iron? Maybe it was too many Quest bars instead of red meat when I had odd cravings during my dental infection recently. Maybe because it's too hard to find liver at the grocery store and I haven't eaten much of it lately. Maybe the antibiotics damaged my intestines . And apparently, I'm a heavy bleeder . ...

Collagen-filled Low Carb Burritos

Low-carb, grain-free Mexican food is hard to find, but it's easy to make your own at home. This recipe has an authentic ingredient: carne de lengua, or beef tongue. Don't be put off: beef tongue is tender, delicious, and full of collagen. Look for it directly from farmers in your area. To cook it, cut it in 1" to 1-1/2" slices and pressure cook for one hour. Enjoy the delicious broth as a bonus. Ingredients 1 slice cooked beef tongue, peeled and cut into small cubes 1 egg wrap (I use these  from Egglife) 1/4 cup cooked black or pinto beans Chili pepper Oregano Garlic (powdered or minced) Cumin Guacamole (with no emulsifiers) Salsa Shredded cheddar cheese Sour cream or homemade cream cheese  with no emulsifiers  Put the egg wrap on a plate and put the beef and beans down the middle of it. Sprinkle with the herbs and spices. Wrap, turn over and microwave for 1-2 minutes. Spoon salsa over the burrito and sprinkle with cheese. Add guacamole and sour cream or homemade crea...

Blog Lineup Change

Bye-bye, Fathead. I've enjoyed the blog, but can't endorse the high-fat, high-carb Perfect Health Diet that somehow makes so much sense to some otherwise bright people. An astrophysicist makes some rookie mistakes on a LC diet, misdiagnoses them, makes up "glucose deficiency," and creates a diet that's been shown in intervention studies to increase small LDL, which can lead to heart disease. A computer programmer believes in the diet and doesn't seem eager to refute it because, perhaps, scientists are freakin' liars and while he's good at spotting logical inconsistencies, lacks some intermediate knowledge of human biology. To Tom's credit, he says it's not the right diet for everyone, but given the truckload of food that has to be prepared and eaten, impracticality of following it while traveling (or even not traveling), and unsuitability for FODMAPs sufferers, diabetics and anyone prone to heart disease (i.e., much of the population), I'm...

Getting Over Palpitations

Note to new readers: please note I'm not a health care provider and have no medical training. If you have heart palpitations, I have no idea whether the following will work for you. Over the past several days, I've had a rough time with heart palpitations and feeling physically jittery. I was wondering if I was going to turn into one of those people who can't sit still. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it would be a major lifestyle change. Kidding aside, something wasn't right and I really needed to get back to normal. I tried popping potassium pills like candy. I ate more. I doubled up on my iron dose. I went to yoga and even got on the treadmill at 6 AM yesterday. I tried the nuclear option of eating more carbs to stop peeing away minerals. Most of these things helped, but the problem kept coming back. A comment from Galina made me look up epinephrine, one of the drugs my surgeon used to anesthetize me Friday. First, the assistant at the surge...