I mentioned some of this in an earlier post, but added a few additional thoughts as time has passed and I have more data. My food expense is low for a number of reasons:
1. I mostly follow the Warrior Diet and do not eat anything during the day, except a little fruit and maybe nuts.
2. I do not eat very much meat or dairy, which are huge cost drivers in most grocery budgets, and instead eat legumes for most of my protein.
3. I have learned to be content with simple eating, but also cultivated my cooking skill to make simple meals go further, taste wise.
4. The bulk of my calories come from lost-cost staples: legumes, rice, potatoes, tortillas, etc.
5. I only buy produce that is either on sale/in-season or just cheap all the time (bananas, carrots, etc.), instead of more expensive options. And I find that groceries are almost always running a deep discount on one or two items, so I load up and we eat a lot of that item for the next few days.
6. I only buy meat, eggs, nuts when they are on sale. For example, a local grocer was selling 12oz containers of peanuts for $2/container. We bought like 14 of them over a few week span.
7. I live in Chicago now and have access to a lot of different grocers. DF and I walk to the different grocers and look for whatever is cheapest. This is not the most efficient use of time, but it is part of our exercise, so we don't mind. So we sort of pick and choose from ~5 grocers, buying whatever each is loss leading with.
8. We take advantage of different specials that are offered. For example, a local grocer offered a Groupon for $10 of groceries for $7, which each of us were able to use 4 times. This netted $12 each of free groceries. A few weeks ago we both used an offer from Google Express where we each got $20 of free groceries net of delivery fee. These discounts add up.
9. The way I do my food/grocery accounting distorts my total "food" number down a bit, since I do not include meals out in food/groceries. Since eating at home is so cheap for us (I checked DF's finances and she has spent around $45/month, so about the same as me), I track eating out as entertainment. Given that I can eat at home for a little over $1/day, it is not accurate to say that a $8 meal out is purely for nutrition. As a result, my "food" expense will appear a little low, because a number of our meals wind up in "entertainment". With that said, we also utilize a lot of Groupons and special offers for eating out, so it's not like we are spending that much eating out.
@mfi - If I can remember, I will hang onto my receipts and post actual purchases. I just checked, and my 2015 average monthly grocery expense is $38/month. I can give you a pretty close approximation right now, though. Most months I buy some variation of the following items:
1. Bananas, around 40 total, 0.4 pounds each, $.50/pound = $8. This is lunch on weekdays. On weekends, I frequently will not anything for lunch (I normally eat a lot on Friday/Saturday nights), or just leftovers from the night before
2. A combination of the following legumes (purchased dry): black beans, red beans, pinto beans, white beans, red lentils, chick peas. These vary a bit, but I normally buy the red lentils for ~$0.8/pound, black beans for $1/pound, pinto beans for $1/pound, red beans for a bit more, and the others for a little more.
3. Rice (purchased every few months in 25 pound bags, effectively free), russet potatoes (saw some for $1.50 for 5 pounds last weekend), corn/flour tortillas, pasta, etc.
4. Eggs, when on sale.
5. Chicken, if on sale, for a couple meals.
6. Assorted produce, as noted above, based on what is on season and being deeply discounted.
7. Nuts, when on sale (which is rare unfortunately).
Here are a few of the meals we have had in the last few weeks:
Red lentil dal (like this
http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/red_lentil_dal/ ), cucumbers, broccoli, saffron/turmeric rice.
Bean burritos (refried pinto beans, lettuce, avocado, tortillas, tomato, cilantro rice.)
Black beans, Brussels sprouts, rice, broccoli.
Red beans and rice (meatless), lettuce, carrots.
Chana masala (like this
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/236564/cha ... hick-peas/ ), turmeric rice, lettuce, squash (yellow and zucchini).
As you can see, our meals are all over the place, but staples constitute the bulk of our diet and cheap produce fills in the rest. So trips to the grocery generally include weekly produce, and depending on what we have in the pantry and what is on sale we may or may not buy staples.
@heyhey - Thanks! Yeah, as noted above I (mostly) follow the Warrior Diet most days. I listed a few of our recent meals above, which should give an idea of what I eat.
Good question. I maintained my weight for most of 2015, but back in September I realized I was not making much progress on my body fat goal, so I got back on track (by increasing the ratio of vegetables to rice/potatoes/tortillas/pasta/bread, and exercising more consistently) and since then I have been losing weight at a steady clip. I would note that it would be very hard to gain weight following a diet like mine, where you essentially eat (plants) once per day. Getting enough calories just has to do with modulating the calorically dense food (rice, potatoes, etc.)
Also, we tend to not eat as clean on the weekends (meals out with family/friends, homemade pizza/Thai/Indian), so our weight pattern normally spikes on the weekend up a pound or two, and then slowly falls during the week
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