I’m working hard to eat more fruits and vegetables in my diet. I’m also preparing large batches of brown rice to bring to lunch at work during the week. This takes a lot of time!
Buying fresh fruits and vegetables means taking the time to clean, cut, and store everything. Making rice means prep time to put together the vegetables, rice, and other ingredients. You have to cook it all, store it all, and clean up afterward. Doing all of this takes a lot of time. It would be a lot faster to take a Hot Pocket out of the freezer and microwave it for two minutes (this is what I did for a long time). No offense to Hot Pockets, but that is obviously not the healthy choice.
It’s not easy, and it’s hard to sacrifice the time when you’re busy with work and life but it’s worth it in the end. After all, when is taking the easy way out the right decision?
I like Subway and I think they offer some great options when you need to eat out for convenience. It may be considered fast food, but I don’t put it in the same category as McDonald’s or Burger King. However, you can’t just walk into Subway and order anything off the menu if you want to eat healthy (no matter what Jared wants you to think). Here are some quick facts from the Subway menu to help you make wise decisions the next time you are there. (Official Subway nutrition facts)
17 Tips to Cut Calories at Subway
The nutrition values for the sandwiches on the ‘6 grams of fat or less‘ menu do not include cheese or condiments. Be aware of the calories and fat cheese and condiments will add to these values.
Ordering double meat on the ‘6 grams of fat or less menu‘ will help you to feel a lot more full without adding lots of extra calories and carbohydrates.
It’s true that you can eat relatively healthy at Subway if you are careful, but any time you eat deli meat you are consuming large amounts of sodium- about half of the recommended daily intake from just a 6 inch sandwich.
The Veggie Delite is the healthiest choice on the menu (of course it has no meat).
My favorite Subway sandwich (a 12 inch Spicy Italian) contains well over 1,000 calories.
If you want mayonnaise, order light mayonnaise -light mayonnaise saves you 60 calories and 7 grams of fat per serving.
Mustard and vinegar are your best condiment choices, with about 5 calories for 2 tbsp of mustard, and 0 calories per serving of vinegar.
Regular mayonnaise and ranch dressing are the worst condiment choices- Ranch has 120 calories, 13 g of fat, 210 mg sodium per serving and mayonnaise has 110 calories, 12 g fat, 80 mg sodium per serving.
The lowest calorie cheese is American, with 40 calories per 2 ‘triangles’.
The highest calorie cheese is Cheddar, with 60 calories per 2 ‘triangles’.
Do you know the serving size of condiments the sandwich artist is putting on your sandwich? Someone getting generous with mayonnaise could cost you a lot of calories.
The lowest calorie bread is regular wheat or white at 200 calories per 6 inch serving.
The highest calorie breads are Honey Oat and Italian Herb & Cheese at 250 calories per 6 inch serving.
The lowest calorie sandwiches from the ‘6 grams of fat or less menu‘ are the 6 inch Veggie Delite at 230 calories and the 6 inch Turkey Breast at 280 calories *does not include cheese or condiments.
The highest calorie sandwich from the ‘6 grams of fat or less menu‘ is the 6 inch Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki at 370 calories *does not include cheese or condiments.
The lowest calorie sandwich from the regular sandwich menu is the 6 inch Subway Melt at 380 calories *includes cheese, no condiments.
The highest calorie sandwich from the regular sandwich menu is the 6 inch Chicken and Bacon Ranch at 580 calories *includes cheese, no condiments.
I’ve made a lot of progress on this frugal lifestyle concept, but I still have a long way to go. Today is trash day in my neighborhood so I took a few moments to clean out the refrigerator before taking the trash out of the house. Sadly, I have to admit that I am still throwing away food!
At my last trip to the grocery store I bought some extra turkey because it was on sale and today I found some in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator that I had forgotten to either use or freeze in time. There were a few other things here and there, nothing too extreme, but it is a frustrating problem none-the-less. Would I be more careful if I actually had to put three one dollar bills in the trash can instead of a package of turkey? I think I would, but I’m not sure how to really fix the problem. It’s sad that I have so much food in my house that out of pure laziness or forgetfulness I have to throw it away. I know one thing for sure, when I get home tonight I will go through everything in the refrigerator and figure out what needs to be eaten first to avoid any more food being wasted. Perhaps I can guilt myself into fixing this problem or make a donation to a homeless shelter when I do this. I don’t know, but I hope I can fix this some day.
Recently, I posted about my poor budgeting and spending at work. Now I would like to share some tips on how to reduce spending on food at work and what I have done to save about $100 a month compared to my old ways.
Skip Starbucks and drink coffee at work- a lot of offices have coffee available for free. If so, that is obviously a great chance to save some money. I don’t have that option at my office so I bought a Senseo coffee machine and brew my own coffee at my desk. The Senseo machine is about $60, but you could pay for that by skipping lattes for a month. Admittedly, you could get a less expensive coffee maker, but the Senseo does not require filters and is easy to clean up. I think it payed for itself very quickly for me. The Senseo doesn’t brew the greatest coffee, but it’s not bad and for less than $0.50 per cup it gets the job done. Whatever your substitute, the goal is to cut out the $4 lattes.
Brown bag it- again, an obvious solution, but if you haven’t tried it you will truly be amazed at how much money you can save by doing this. My favorite ‘brown bag’ lunch is leftovers from dinner, preferably pasta or something easy to heat up in the microwave at work. Another easy option is sandwiches, which can even be made the night before to save time in the morning. I also keep an emergency stash of Hot Pockets (Lean Pockets) for days that I don’t feel like preparing anything or days that I forget to bring food (I keep some in the freezer at work). A lot of these options depend on having a refrigerator at work, so hopefully that is possible for you. If not, your variety may be limited a bit, but perhaps an insulated travel bag with an ice pack would get the job done. Even if you have to go out and buy something, it will quickly pay for itself.
Keep snacks and favorite drinks at the office- I’m trying to cut snacks and sodas out of my diet as much as possible, but if I am going to indulge, I don’t want to pay the prices at the vending machine. Your money goes so much farther on these items at the grocery store, so stock up on the things you like, but don’t let yourself go crazy with it. For example, I try to allow myself either one cup of coffee or one diet soda per day at work. Sometimes I’ll skip one or the other for the whole week. My desire is to avoid becoming dependent on these drinks and form a habit that could get pricey. Some of my coworkers will go through four or more sodas per day, and buy them at vending machines- paying a huge premium over the grocery store. The other part of this tip is to replace the foods you like with low calorie options- I try to go for some Baked Lays or the new Nabisco 100 Calorie snacks. I’m not going for perfection here, just trying to make the best choices I can while I’m away from home.
Drink water- most offices have a water cooler, which makes this so easy (and free). I don’t have that option at work- only a drinking fountain. I’m not thrilled with drinking tap water, and even less thrilled with the germs that may be floating around it, but I just bring a bottle of water to work each day and refill it. I’m really tempted to bring in a gallon of purified water each day, if for nothing else than to avoid the germs around the fountain, but I haven’t bothered yet and I’ve survived on the tap water so far.
Tell your coworkers you’ll never eat with them again! Okay, that’s a joke, but you definitely can’t make it a habit to eat out every day if you want to save money on your lunches. If saving money isn’t important to you or the camaraderie is worth more, then by all means go for it. I work with programmers, who tend to be a quiet bunch, so we are fine with going out to lunch together every couple of weeks or so. That works for us and makes it easy on the budget. If going out to lunch can somehow better your career or help you get ahead (maybe going to lunch with the boss) then I would consider it money well spent, you’ll just have to look for other areas to cut back.
A typical month in the past would have seen me spend about $80 – $100 eating out at work (that’s after I had kicked the latte habit). There is nothing inherently wrong with spending some money on lunch. However, for myself I found that I was often just picking up something convenient and fast and eating it at my desk in a hurry. There just wasn’t a good reason to spend $5 – $10 to do that when I could bring food from home about a fourth of the cost and get the same result. If your office goes out to lunch and you want to be part of the culture then make that part of your budget and have fun. At the very least, I think everyone can benefit by spending less on coffee and skipping the vending machines. I practice all of these tips and it has made a big difference in my budget. Good luck!
When I totaled my weekly budget summary on Sunday I noticed that I had spent about $22 eating out at work over the past week. I only had one ‘real’ meal that week when I went to lunch with some coworkers, but that was only about $7 anyway. I dug into the numbers and realized that a bagel here, some coffee there, and a few snacks had all added up quite quickly.
$22 is probably a lot less money than I would have spent in a typical week eating at work just a few months ago (actually probably less than I would have spent on coffee alone in one week), but now that I’m committed to my budget, and paying every extra dollar I can find toward debt, the total really jumps out at me. I need to focus this week and keep the cash in my wallet. So far I’m two for two on days not spending any money while at work. This post will hopefully keep me accountable for the next three days.
and brew my own coffee at my desk. The Senseo machine is about $60, but you could pay for that by skipping lattes for a month. Admittedly, you could get a less expensive coffee maker, but the Senseo does not require filters and is easy to clean up. I think it payed for itself very quickly for me. The Senseo doesn’t brew the greatest coffee, but it’s not bad and for less than $0.50 per cup it gets the job done. Whatever your substitute, the goal is to cut out the $4 lattes.
