As usual, you’re going to get a little “tough love” from me on this one. I recall a conversation with a diabetic patient who claimed the same thing. I asked this patient to give me an example of some things he/she was currently eating and CAN afford. An example was “hamburger helper cheeseburger macaroni”. I said, “let me get this straight, you can afford the ground beef, correct?” The patient nodded yes. “You spend a couple bucks on the box of hamburger helper which is where most of your additional calories (and carbs for this particular patient – diabetic) are coming from, correct?” The patient nodded yes again (and could likely sense where I was going at this point I think). “You can afford to swap out that hamburger helper with a whole wheat bun or something better for you and make burgers then.” I then proceeded to give the patient plenty of other examples of how the CHOICES they made were the problem, not the money.
Our society has been flooded with such falsities in the fitness industry that people think you need to eat like a rabbit or spend hundreds more on “organic” or “health products/supplements” in order to be healthy, lose weight or gain muscle and that’s simply not the case.
I’m not going to sugar coat it, in most cases the healthier options are indeed more expensive. But getting fit on a budget is definitely doable. I didn’t grow up with a lot of money. My family bought in bulk, grew our own food when we could and used various methods of saving money (like powdered milk for instance). My brother and I both were able to find a path to fitness at a certain point despite not rolling in wealth. My father also did well with losing weight for many years by making small changes and adding exercise into the mix (he walked a couple miles a day, nothing crazy). I was able to get fit in college while living off of whatever student loans didn’t go to tuition, rent or other fixed expenses. The moral of the story is that you CAN do it on a budget, you just need to put the work in when it comes to finding the better choice at the grocery store.
What about gym memberships? They are expensive! Some of them are, yes. With Planet Fitness ($10/month) and Anytime Fitness franchises popping up all over the place and open 24/7 your excuses in this department are limited. I also know plenty of people that have repurposed many things into makeshift home gym equipment or bought used gym equipment and used it at home. All you really need is a set of dumbbells to get a workout in (or a nearby playground and your bodyweight works well too). Hell, these days a tire and a sledgehammer go a long way! If you still can’t find the scratch to make any of that happen just remember that all you need for cardio is YOU. Once again, you have to get creative and put in the work if you want to make it happen. Better yet…you have to WANT to make it happen first. I also find that if people are spending money every month on something they tend to use it more out of self guilt that the money is going to waste otherwise (which is true).
The major point here is that you don’t need to go broke to get fit. You DO need to put in the time and effort. Society these days expects a magic pill or a “quick fix” to solve all of their problems and that is simply not the case with your physical fitness. It takes time, it’s not easy and you have to WANT to make it happen. Start by making small changes (such as the hamburger helper example in the beginning). Swap out some of the bad things you are eating in order to stay within your “caloric budget”. Start looking at your calories as a separate budget and you will do pretty well. If you have 2000 calories to spend every day, you better budget those calories. Avoid some of the pitfalls of the dieting world like grabbing the “fat free” product because you’ve heard fats are evil. Spoiler alert, they are usually loaded with sugar to replace the fats and sugar is usually the worse of the two evils. I will go more into depth about this later in a “diet hacks” type post. You also need to remember that you are in the long game here. You are making better choices within your budget in order to increase your health to be around longer. Obesity and poor nutrition lead to a host of medical problems and if you think those aren’t going to be expensive down the line, you have another thing coming. Look at your health and fitness as an investment and your body will likely thank you. I’m not saying you’re going to be a picture of health in your 80s or 90s, all of our bodies break down and have problems with age, but the more physically fit and healthy a person is, the less problems they tend to have.
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