Does this Recession Make Me Look Fat?

We’ve all seen the images of scrawny depression era people, but things have changed since then. So what does a recession look like? Well it can look a bit plumper than your pre-recession body. And any time we face stress people tend to eat more. Less money, plus, more eating = fat.

It doesn’t help that our food is less healthy than it was during the depression. Although there is more focus on organic and natural, these foods cost more. Today eating cheap means eating poorly and that can add extra fat and sugar to your diet. During the recession you could buy a dollar meal at McDonald’s or pop some change into a vending machine for a super sweet soda.

To battle the bulge try reducing dependence on meat and cooking the old fashioned way. Buy your beans dried. Avoid packaged and pre-cooked food. As for organic food fruits and vegetables, the general rule is that if you are going to eat the skin, buy organic. There are also the dirty dozen lists add to that dairy, eggs, tea and coffee. For tips on how to shop organic on a budget visit Organic Authority.

I go through shopping and cooking slumps pretty regularly. That’s always a blow to my thighs and my bank account, because we’ll usually end up getting way too much take out. So to combat that, we’ve devised a list of enough dinner ideas to fill a month. I put them into an excel spreadsheet added a random integer column and use that to create a working menu for the month. For the next month I simple hit F9 to regenerate the random integers resort the list and create a new menu.

Our plan is to focus more on keeping the kitchen stocked to reduce last minute trips to the store and eating out. And by actually cooking meals rather than using prepackaged or readymade we’ll (cross our fingers) keep calories down.