I have known for a while that my sweet tooth has teetered on the edge of out of control. As a child I drank a minimum of a can of soda a day. I loved fruity candy like Twizzlers and Starbust and once filled up the center portion of my Trapper Keeper notebook with Starburst wrappers in less than a month.
I loved sweets so much I could fill several paragraphs with examples. That, however, is not the point.
Over the years I have started to wean myself off of the sugar overload. First, the summer before my senior year of college I decided to challenge myself to cut soda out of my diet, at first for 30 days and then extended indefinitely. Two years later, I started actively trying to lose weight using sparkpeople and calorie counting. Turns out, those sugar laden drinks and foods weren’t all that healthy. (No duh, right?)
The sweet tooth persisted. Just this year, as I mentioned in an earlier post, it has come to something like a head. I decided to wean myself off of sugar starting with the little candy I keep in my desk for student rewards. Then I watched “Fed UP,” an excellent documentary about childhood obesity and sugar’s toxicity. I didn’t learn anything new, really, but the presentation pushed me in a direction I was already leaning.
Since the end of February, I have been working on weaning myself off added sugar. (I plan to dedicate an entire post to this some time in the future.) Here’s where the budget part comes in.
For as long as I have been on this journey towards greater frugality and minimalism, I have been working diligently at lowering the grocery line item in my budget. I’ve cut out the weekly treat item that I used to put o=in my cart back when shopping at Trader Joe’s wasn’t like getting a piece of legislation through Congress. (Trader Joe’s is still awesome; Woodruff Road is not.) I batch cook my meals to save both on cost and tiem so that my meals are ready to throw in my lunch bag each day. I buy bigger portions of commodities, like a 20lb bag of rice, than is normal for a single girl.
All these tweaks have been beneficial to my budget. In February I notched the lowest monthly grocery total I can remember, $107. I knew that wouldn’t last. This month? $210
Yes, it hurt just a little to see my monthly spending nearly double month to month and increase $60 from normal. Yes, I bought some bulk household items like dishwasher pods. That was only part. The biggest reason for the increased cost came from my attempt to find suitable, convenient snacks without added sugar.
I have started to add back apples to my daily diet. I also now try to have some oranges on hand to satisfy my sweet craving in the evening when I get home from work. I purchased a bag of unsulfered dried apricots as a possible alternative for school day snacks. (This does not seem to work for my “runger” on speedwork days.) I purchased blueberries so that I could start adding flavor to plain Greek Yogurt. (There is a ridiculous amount of added sugar in flavored yogurt.)
This is still a work in progress. I keep coming across staples in my diet, staples that provide an immense amount of convenience to my fully-packed teacher’s schedule. So far, the convenient, healthy options appear to have the ability to put a serious hurt on my budget.
As of right now, I do not have any clear answers; no winner has been decided. In one corner sits a determination to clean up my diet from sugar’s toxicity. The other corner holds the frugal minimalist coached by the time-sucking teacher schedule. Hopefully I will soon be able to transform this from a fight to cooperative teamwork.