Best Diet in the World

Its called being broke as hell.  There is absolutely no eating out, and what food you have in the house has to be carefully rationed out.  See? No overeating haha.  I look forward to being on the 'super' diet for the next two weeks.  Hooray!  Anyone else joining me on this amazing journey of figuring out how to make my meagar food stores last?

Aww, that kinda sucks :(

My advice?  Eggs.  Cheap and nutritious.  Dried beans, ditto.  Store brand peanut butter is pretty cheap too.

oh yeah I got my egg stores!!  Eh..it doesn't really suck.  I am reaping the rewards of spending to much money on crap I don't need.  Plus, its fun to figure out how to make a tasty meal out of weird stuff you already have at home. 

Oh I was on this diet for a while as a student but that was more, why waste money on food when I need alcohol? Very effective though!

Heh.  Similar diet when I moved out of the parents' house.  I swear I lived on eggs and peanut butter for months.

It IS kind of fun to throw all the odds 'n ends in the fridge together and see what happens...

I'm on the same diet!  Yay being dirt poor!  I actually end up buying things that are generally more expensive (like protein bars and such), but I just wait till they're on an amazing sale and stock up.  My only problem with this is, I wanted to extend my work-outs by another 20 - 30 but don't have the money for the extra 200 - 300 calories a day that I'd need to eat.  Hah!

Completely with everyone here. Being a college student and "dieting" is pretty much impossible. Buying anything green or leafy, as well as expensive "diet foods" pretty much eats up my spending money.

Great for limiting caloric intake when you have nothing. Next time you go shopping definitely look at what is on sale and like sukibahsoun said, stock up on it! For example I went to the store yesterday and propel water was on sale for fifty cents a bottle. I bought a lot of it.

Cereals really expensive but it lasts me about five or six meals. Pasta is dirt cheap and if you eat a "serving size" top it with a bit of inexpensive low calorie meat and put like two tbsp of "good" pasta sauce you have about 6 or 7 meals per .99 cent bag of pasta and 2.00 meat( I hate buying meat -_-) a ton more for the sauce.

Another great way to get greens in, especially since they can be so expensive, is by buying frozen.  I started buying frozen veggies for a few reasons.  One is because they are super cheap.  The other is because I'm buying for one person, so most of the time my veggies would go bad before I finished them.

I prefer fresh, but frozen is better than canned!

Rice and Bean Burritos with salsa (and/or some other condiment): cheap and effective.

Original Post by sukibahsoun:

Another great way to get greens in, especially since they can be so expensive, is by buying frozen.  I started buying frozen veggies for a few reasons.  One is because they are super cheap.  The other is because I'm buying for one person, so most of the time my veggies would go bad before I finished them.

I prefer fresh, but frozen is better than canned!

 Agreed on this, especially since I'm in a similar boat right now. Frozen veggies can come really cheaply and they're so much easier to prepare so I actually do eat them. You also lower your risk of getting E. Coli and the like.

Many years ago, my 3 college roommates and I put in $10 per person and shared a weeks worth of breakfast, lunch and dinner Mon-Thurs. (Weekends we always hoped for dates-- this was back in the day when boys paid for food on dates.  Or some of us went home for Mom's good cooking.)  We managed to eat really well, and even shared about 1 dinner a week with the boys next door.

The rules were no soft drinks, no chips, no frozen dinners, no cookies, no beer, and not much prepared food with the household money.  Nowadays I would add no bottled drinks at all.  What we did buy was pantry/refrigerator staples like flour, sugar, oats, cereals, canned tomatoes, chicken, tuna, peanut butter, cheese, eggs, milk, butter, hamburger, frozen vegetables, salad greens, etc.  Of course, we also had to have chocolate chips (to make cookies for the boys next door who were really cute ).  We all maintained healthy weights, and each of us only  had to cook dinner once a week.

I guess that nowadays 4 people could do the same thing with maybe $20 per week to account for inflation?  The other trick was to shop with a list, and stay away from the "junk food aisle".  Although I can now afford to spend much more on groceries, I learned as much from this experience that has stood me in good stead as I did from my course work.

hahaha amazing story dkenworthy, and great advice

Hahah nice! Yeah I'm on the college student/broke diet. Mostly live off of beef ramen, frozen veggies, oatmeal, and eggs. It's nice too cause it also makes you more of a lightweight so you don't have to spend as much on drinks to get drunk :P

I am a broke student but I manage to still afford chicken/greens and fruits(amongst-stawberries, blueberries, and such). Typically there is one grocery store in my town that all the people go to so the prices are kinda steep(location of the store) but if you drive 5 miles farther there is another store that has super hardcore savings due to no one going there. Its ridiculous. I got buy 1 get 2 free chicken breasts(packs of 4 each). The best bet is to actually go to a store that is out of the way-they usually have to cut prices to compete. The 3 towns i have lived in there has always been one store trying to compete and in turn have to cut prices. Also, lots of greens, and apples, grapes, on season produce is all cheaper. Also the less processed food the cheaper in some cases.

try local farmers as well-they usually have great deals.

I have a food income of 80-100 a month and that is easily enough for me to find healthy options. Cut coupons, go on sale days, visit out of the way stores, go to whole foods and stock up on one quality spice item a month.

it can be done!!!!!

HEH. Yes. Best diet ever. :P I'm going back to it in January when I move to the west coast. Fun times.

What's really helped me before is shopping sales. I find the cheapest grocery store(s) that I can, and then keep an eye on their online flyers to see what's discounted and when.

I found that doing it that way gave me a good variety and kept me in my budget at the same time.

I'mso glad I wasn't the only one on that diet! It really stinks about the high prices of fresh produce. The key is to buy small amounts of the cheaper stuff, forgo the blueberries and mangoes and get bananas and apples.

I recommend oatmeal, the steel cut is my favorite, yet a little more pricey. It is completely filling and anything can be added: fruit, nuts, spices. Quick to prepare too! Yogurt is often cheap too, yummy!

Best of Luck.

Agana, I'm joining you for the next two weeks!!!! I refuse to eat out, order delivery, or grab take out... I plan to ration and make all my meals and save some money and lose weight from portion control and not over eating, over the summer I lost weight by what I called the 'Recession Diet' ... I think I'm going back on it so I'm with you! 

Been there.  After divorce.  Ramen Noodles, store brand vegetable juice, eggs. Hope you have some friends that will invite you to have dinner with them.  Hang in there, kid, it gets better.

This diet is awesome!  I went through it for months for a while and it would have worked because I was counting every calorie at the time but at my work if the greasy hot dogs and tornados were too old (over 4 hours) then when we were throwing them out we could eat them.  That killed the diet lol.  My husband and I got so fat because I would save some for him too.  Ramen was awesome because at Walmart they are .32 cents a piece.

Off topic but I'm always surprised when I see someone that makes $8 an hour at a grocery store carrying around an I-Phone. People say they are broke all the time, but have loads of money to give Apple. I spend a lot on my food, I buy organic whenever possible, I shop at the Union Square farmers market whenever I can. I don't own a cell phone. I don't have a flat screen TV. Some of my hand bags cost $1. It worries me to see people spend more on their hair then they do on the food they put in their bodies.

Omg inkblue I totally agree!  This girl I worked with (we were both making 7.90 an hour) had coach purses and wore guchi and had a brand new blackberry and got her nails filled once a week.  The funny thing was she also had a new car and was on FOOD STAMPS.  Now, don't get me wrong, there is NOTHING wrong with getting food stamps or any other kind of government help if you need it.  I just don't get how she could have all of this stuff and still qualify for food stamps.  I seriously needed tons of government help but refused to get it and I barely had a car, was homeless every other week.  She almost never ate too, she was TINY.

edit: when she did eat it usually was candy.