Frugal 101: Make a decision to change your eating habits
The path to frugality sometimes is about solving the most simple aspect of your life.
And what I learn is that majority of the greatest gains are resolve by making a decision to change your eating habits.
Realizing your Eating Habits
Many folks would like to be frugal and the decision to be frugal signals to yourself a desire to be more organized.
To be more organized to optimize your personal finance, you have to first asked yourself if you are bingeing on food a bit too much.
A lot of people don’t realize that they are eating more than they should.
- They like food in general
- They would rather run and exercise and NOT cut down on food
- They think that without that amount they will not have the energy
- They take more meals because they are bored
- They take more meals under certain trigger situations
I know because I have that problem as well. Your eating pattern is a habit form when you are young, mostly started from your parents.
If you eat the wrong stuff because your parents taught you the wrong stuff, you build nasty habit that cannot be easily changed.
You get overweight > you become unproductive > you don’t get enough energy for life > you become a low performer in life > your health care costs gets up > you fail your frugal living
So you can see how important overcome your bad eating habits.
Make redefining your eating habit a project
The first step is to acknowledge that you need to change this key habit. If you change this key habit, you will create a chain reaction.
Your life can get infinitely better.
First thing is to start being aware of what you eat, when you eat, how you are feeling when you eat the stuff.
It is also important to study if those food is really good for you or are you eating too much in quantity.
A lot of people are just not aware of what are good and not so good food.
Be aware.
Reduce your intake
Reducing your intake sounds very drastic, but actually its not. The same principles still rule
- Eat the healthy food
- Cut away the not so healthy food slowly ( don’t do it at one shot! You may not stay on the project if you do drastic cuts)
- Take note of the energy you require and vary your intake accordingly
Follow a plan to cut down on your intake. There are many plans out there but the Lean Gains and similar diets are not bad.
And who says if you do that you will not have energy. These bodies are built by eating right and reducing in take.
You don’t get ripped by doing so much exercise but eat all the crappy food that comes your way.
You get ripped by watching how much you eat.
Brief summary of the differences that exist between the various forms of intermittent fasting.
If you’re unclear about what intermittent fasting is, read this.
- ADF (alternate day fasting, 36/12 hrs fast/feed). See also The Alternate-Day Diet, which is a milder form of ADF. While I don’t think The Alternate-Day Diet is an optimal approach for the fitness enthusiast, Johnson’s book is surprisingly good and scientifically accurate. Everything about the title (“turn on your skinny gene”) screams faddishness, but I was pleasantly surprised after finishing it. Having read all the quoted studies on ADF myself, I could not find any major misrepresentation of the findings apart from a few too optimistic blurbs about fasting and life extension. I can easily recommend this book for it’s summary of the ADF findings. And while the nutritional advice might not be cutting edge, it’s certainly not bad or misleading either.
- The Warrior Diet (20/4 hrs fast/feed). WD is actually not intermittent fasting in the strictest sense of the word, since the author allows small meals during the fast (vegetables, fruits). The WD book is somewhat of a cult classic, but the book prefers to quote stories and myth instead of scientifical evidence to supports it’s (sometimes ridiculous) claims.
- Eat Stop Eat (24 hrs fasting, 1-2x/week). You can read my review of Eat Stop Eat here. This is a book I highly recommend for those interested in fat loss and the physiology of fasting. Eat Stop Eat has a strong following with many success stories.
- The Fast-5 Diet. (19/5 hrs fast/feed). Fast-5 should be available for free on the Fast-5 website. I shouldn’t critique a book that is given a away freely. But let’s just say I don’t consider reading it the greatest investment of time you can make if you have the most basic understanding of how weight loss works.
- Leangains (16/8 hrs fast/feed)
Within each of these systems, there are more or less specific guidelines regarding nutrition, ranging from the very vague (ADF) to the strict (Leangains). Leangains is specifically tailored to fitness and strength training, and for those wanting to get as lean and strong as possible. In comparison to other intermittent fasting based diets much more emphasis is put on proper pre- and post-workout nutrition. There are also specific guidelines with regards to calorie cycling, macrocomposition and meal timing.
LeanGains.com | Brief Summary of Popular Approaches to Intermittent Fasting | More here
Conclusion
Many people cannot get the desired results because firstly, they cannot overcome their habits built since 4 years old.
They cannot change their mindset and make a decision to cut down.
And they refuse to believe that diet matters a lot to both health and their desired energy levels and body shape.
They refuse to learn and keep giving themselves excuses that it doesn’t work.
Sometimes it just depends on whether you can step out of your habit zone and try.
If you optimize your intake, you will definitely have more energy and also optimize your financial situation
About the Author
Kyith Kyith is a blogger with interest in all things on Wealth Mastery, Technology, Business and Productivity.
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