Lose weight, save money and reduce waste with friends

Our group of friends have learned there are many more benefits to being health conscious than just losing weight! We first started getting together to try and lose weight after Christmas. My friends went with the keto diet and I chose intermittent fasting. Of course, everyone needs to make sure they are medically safe and that whatever you choose suits you, as well as being mindful that children have different needs.

Having company certainly helps with motivation as we meet for coffee most mornings and compare notes. A bonus from this however, aside from losing weight and feeling much better, is that our grocery bills are a fraction of the usual. I am so pleased to see money left in my account on pay day! One friend reported that for her and her husband the usual spend at Harris Farm was over $200. Now it is under $40. I am single so used to spend around $100 a week on groceries and another $100 plus going out. Now I am down to $60 a week all up!

The other issue for me was waste. I would regularly buy whatever took my eye and it would go off in the fridge. Now I make a list (amazing how that works) and only buy enough for my meals. For example, I buy one zucchini instead of a bag full. I find grating some colourful veggies such as carrot, zucchini, yellow squash and red capsicum makes the meal interesting and seems bigger somehow. I get the ALDI salmon OR the chicken thighs - not both like before! - and either of these will last me for over a week.

Buying fresh produce is much cheaper and better than packets. The diet has reduced my appetite, so I can afford to buy smaller pieces of meat of higher quality. It takes some organisation but is so worth it. Training yourself to eat less certainly helps the budget. There are some good resources on intermittent fasting on the Internet and Dr Michael Mosley's book. My friends are using The Power of Protein. I also found a guy who appeared on The Doctors, who has created the Snake Diet, although that's a little extreme for me!

DIY 'mixed vegie bags' makes meals faster and easier

This simple tip saves me money and time every day when preparing meals. Whenever I buy frozen vegetables, I bring them home and immediately divide them into portions, placing them into ziplock bags, then popping them in the freezer. I often divide up broccoli, peas, cabbage, sprouts, carrots into the same bag. This way, they take up less space in the freezer and I know exactly how many meals they will serve. None ever get wasted and they can be either stored together or placed with other food to make it instantly possible to grab a complete meal. The same method works well with fresh food in preparation for things such as school fruit or lunch breaks, when time is at a premium in the mornings!!

A wee piece of good advice

Toilet cleaning, deodorising and water conservation has never been easier.

You can kill three birds with one stone by piercing a few holes through the lid of a bottle of vinegar and putting the bottle in your toilet cistern. The weight of the bottle displaces the water meaning you use less water with each flush. The vinegar will slowly seep out, leaving your loo smelling nice and making cleaning easier. When the bottle is empty, simply refill it with homemade vinegar which is simply half a bottle of cheap white vinegar topped with rainwater. Leave for 24 hours and it will be full strength and ready to use.

Now, if we could only get men to leave the toilet seat down...

Get your food free all the time

When I separated from my husband and was left with three children, I had no income apart from the pension. Food was getting very scarce, so I had to become creative. Every second week I drove to Flemington fruit and vegetable markets in Sydney (about closing time when most food is the cheapest), bought food by the boxes, and spent the whole day processing it. I made vegetable lasagnes, which I would freeze, all sorts of sauces, vegetable selections for stir frying and steaming, mango ice blocks (pureed mango only) and so on. We would use the most perishable fruit and vegetables the first week and the others later. Eventually we started to have an overabundance of food.

Then I told a few friends of my system, and very soon I was running a little co-op. I started to go to the markets every week and buy a greater variety of food. I got my fruit and vegies free and could also split up my petrol bill for the week amongst participants of the co-op. They got their food much cheaper than in the shop, and I got my food and petrol free.

Apart from that we had the freshest food, with fresh fruit or vegetable juices every day. Out the window went fizzy drinks and any convenience foods. It is now about 14 years since we started to eat like this, and we don't even have a family doctor, because we hardly ever get sick. How much we saved on medicines I cannot even begin to calculate.