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

30-second Fix for a Cracked Stick Blender

Use Mighty Fixit (if you still have some from 2012) or Rescue Tape (which looks like a similar product) to fix a cracked stick blender. After I fixed the attachment, I washed it in the sink and the tape held up. I also wrapped a knife handle several years ago, and it's been through thousands of washings.

Moving on to YouTube

Remember when the blogosphere was a wild ride? Doctors, writers and researchers dove into research, picked apart studies and stood up to official advice and conventional wisdom that didn't work. We found each other in the comments and made a community.  Along the way, Dr. T. Colin Campbell's research got exposed as shoddy by an English major, Tom Naughton made us laugh, "safe starch" fads made us scratch our heads, "Diabetes Warrior" Steve Cooksey almost went to jail, CarbSane trolled everyone who was anyone, and CarbSaneR trolled the troll.  Now it's very quiet. Blogs don't come up in Google search results anymore and even if they did, most of the bloggers have stopped writing.  That's why I've moved on to YouTube. Videos do come up in search results and my shorts--which are mostly what I make--get pushed out to hundreds of people or more. My videos are on food and health (biohacking), but also on growing things and fixing things. If you...

Holiday Dinner Tip from Restaurant Pros: Limit the Menu

After watching some people online getting freaked out about trying to put on holiday dinners and getting overwhelmed to the point that they're thinking about canceling the whole thing, I thought I'd put out a restaurant tip that will help people put on a dinner with less aggravation. A big complaint among the frustrated home cooks I've seen is that family members are not contributing to the dinner. But a bigger problem I see is that their menu is just too big. One lady's family is having her make 12 dishes all by herself, and some of these dishes look pretty complicated. Watch the video here or read on. The reason this is aggravating is that more dishes mean more shopping, more prep, and more cleanup. It's hard to make several dishes that will all be ready at the same time. Even though I used to be a prep cook at a restaurant, I've put on Thanksgiving dinners myself, and I cook from scratch almost every day, there's no way I'd try to make a 12-course di...

The Inner Circle Site is a Maze!

If you're a member of Dr. Davis's Inner Circle site, you know how hard it is to navigate. But I have a YouTube Playlist of videos I've created on using the site--finding yogurt recipes, using the search function, uploading lab tests, finding which lab tests you should take, and more. All videos are under 11 minutes, the longer ones have chapters and time stamps in the description, and in about 30 minutes, you'll be navigating the site like techno-boss. Link here . 

Fly with Reuteri

If you're planning to travel by plane and you want to keep enjoying the benefits of l. reuteri yogurt, you might have gotten sticker shock from the price of l. reuteri probiotics. MyReuteri * costs $46 to $83 for 30 capsules, depending on the CFUs (colony-forming units, or the number of viable microorganisms). If you're thinking about economizing by putting some yogurt in a sturdy container and taking it with you, you can do that. I'll break down the pros and cons and look at some alternatives.  Photo from Unsplash . Cost Yogurt might be less expensive than probiotics, but it isn't free. A half-cup serving costs about 70¢ to make if you start with a previous batch. It contains about 90 billion CFUs if fermented for 36 hours.  This is a lot less than $5.56 for two capsules of 50 billion CFU MyReuteri, but for a one-week vacation, you'd only save $34 by eating yogurt instead. (You can freeze any unused capsules for later.)  Furthermore, the yogurt would have to go in ...