Often times people think eating healthy is expensive, although in the long run a cheap diet of junk food will cost you in health and enjoyment of life. Regardless of the cost, here are 5 ways to save when you’re looking to eat healthy, yet stay on a budget.

1. Buy in bulk
Probably my favorite way to save =) Not only do you avoid extra trips to the grocery store you save from the bulk discount rates. The large containers of rolled oats are my favorite. Much cheaper than buying the small round containers.

2. Avoid buying ‘diet foods’
While it may seem like a good idea to buy the healthy diet foods, often they are just over priced and even sometimes less than healthy options. Instead of buying the protein fortified candy bars, make your own at home. Ditch the 100 calorie snack-packs and have some celery.

3. Stick to the basics
While having 37 different breakfast options provides variety you end up wasting or not using a bunch of what you buy. Stick you what you eat often and a lot of. Come up with different staple meals and stick with them. Which brings me to the next tip.

4. Plan your meals and only buy what you need
Do you often end up throwing food away because it’s gone off before you’ve had a chance to use it? Knowing what you will eat ahead of time will save on headache, wasting and unhealthy eating. So before you go shopping, plan ahead of what you know you’ll need for the week ahead. Next point…

5. Shop from a list
I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly enjoy shopping. I’m not one to just peruse the grocery store aisles with a hint of curiosity. Whenever I go into a store I already know what I want. I run to that item then run to the checkout. There is no ’shopping experience’. So the point being, know what you want ahead of time, make a list, and stick to it. No matter how much you’ll save on that 2 for 1 donut special, you know you don’t need it.

You’re thirsty. Really thirsty! Your water bottles empty and the closest thing around is a soda machine. You’ve been trying to watch your waistline (hopefully getting smaller not bigger). No water in this machine, but at least it has diet soda. No carbs, no sugar, no problem. Right? Wrong!

You’ve been watching what you eat. You’ve started exercising…again. When you want a treat, you make sure it’s the sugar free version. Sugar free ice cream, sugar free yogurt, sugar free cookies. Heck you even buy sugar free sugar to bake with and put in your coffee or tea. You still get the sweet taste with out the quilt and the weight gain.Right? Wrong!

Wrong you ask? But why? Who say’s? Medical researchers at Purdue and Duke Universities are the who. The why, is a little more complicated, but here’s the gist of it.
Research at Purdue suggests, “Artificial sweeteners may disrupt the body’s natural ability to “count” calories based on foods’ sweetness.”

In the past 25 years, the consumption of foods and drinks that contain artificial sweeteners has dramatically increased. Incidentally there has been a significant increase of people who are over weight or obese. Hmmm?

The study at Duke has found that the brain has a “sixth sense” for finding calories. The fake sweeteners trick (lie) to the taste buds and send a message to the brain. The brain then tells the digestive system to prepare for lots of calories. When the sugar and calories don’t show up, the body gets confused and has trouble understanding this mixed message. It then has problems regulating appetite when we eat or drink the real stuff.

The result? The body not longer trusts its ability to gauge the in take of calories. It now thinks that foods sweetened with actual sugar, doesn’t have calories. So then what? We over eat.

Another brain link to over eating is the release of Dopamine. Dopamine is a “feel good” chemicals that sends a message to the brain to turn on feelings such as pleasure or happiness. It’s also been called the “courier of addiction”. We eat, we feel good, and so we eat more. Food can become an addiction if we’re not careful.

Also,it’s believed that eating certain foods can make you hungry. Again playing tricks on the brain. Sugary foods and simple carbohydrates turn into sugar when we eat them. The sugar tells the pancreas to make insulin, which gets the sugar out of the blood and into the organs that need it. The more sugar we eat, the more insulin is released. This brings the blood sugars down so quickly that we have new cravings and want a quick carbohydrate “fix”.

What happened to the days when we ate because we were actually hungry and our bodies needed the energy supplied by food? Who knew how tricky the brain could be, when it came to gaining and losing weight? How do we fight all these urges and cravings?

Think about getting back to basics. Think whole, think natural. Keep it simple. At the same time think complex, at least when it comes to carbs.

Forget the soda, regular or diet. It’s just plain bad for you. Not just how it’s sweetened but the high fructose corn syrup, the carbonation, I’ll tell you about those at another time. Stick to water. If you get tired of it, flavor it up by adding some fresh lemon or orange wedges to it. Grapefruit’s good too.

Avoid “white” foods. Go for whole grains, brown rice and fruits and veggies, good carbs. Avoid highly processed foods. They are usually nutrient deficient. Read labels, the less ingredients, the better. If you can’t pronounce it, do you really want to eat or drink it?

What do the experts say based on the research? Don’t use artificial sweeteners to control weight. But that doesn’t mean you should drink high calorie beverages to satisfy your cravings either. Pay more attention to the calories you consume and participate in some kind of regular exercise. Fewer calories in, more energy out. Pretty much use common sense. Do we really need “experts” to tell us this? Probably not.

What does this mean do you ask, well let’s see. What does a dessert shop have on hand, well that’s an easy one, desserts. What are people going to eat if they are hungry at a dessert shop, desserts. Let’s take that same principle and apply it to home.

Let’s say you have your pantry well stocked with cookies and easy to make cake mixes as well as chocolate frostings and your freezer has some frozen pies and ice cream. If you have a strong craving for sweets what do you think you are going to do.

Well it would be so easy to just run to your pantry and demolish a Twinkie or go to the freezer and pull out that half gallon of ice cream or whatever else may be handy in your kitchen.

This one has a fairly easy solution. Just throw out all of the garbage that you wouldn’t want to eat on a consistent basis. If you don’t have any sweets handy when you get that intense urge are you going to take 15 minutes to drive to a grocery store and and run to the Little Debbie isle, I think not.

Unless you have some severe lack of will power this little trick could save you numerous diet crashes.

It’s a simple fact, keep your kitchen clean. When I say this I am referring to the food content of your kitchen but the other implication is also good advice as you don’t want to be eating in a dirty kitchen.