Going from spending $600 a month on take out and junk to spending only $300 a month on real food and cooking at home isn't a simple task. It has taken me almost 3 years and I still learn something new every day. If you are trying to follow a natural path, if you desire to eat real food, or if you just want to feel better about what you feed your family, here are a few steps based on my journey.

Always take baby steps. This process was built by baby steps. A small step here and there really add up. And any positive step is always a step in the right direction!

I had to change my mindset first. Commercials, billboards, ect. are very skillfully designed to program our minds a certain way. After years of being asleep and letting billionaire corporations control my mind, it was a hard step getting it back. I focused on my health, my husband's health, and our future children's health. Who did I want to be? Did I want my husband to be the same? Did I want my children looking up to us? These were all questions that flooded my mind. I didn't want to face cancer. I didn't want my family to see that. I didn't want diabetes or Alzheimers disease. I didn't want a heart attack or lung disease. I didn't want to be overweight. All these diseases and conditions took over my mind and that's when I made the choice to eat healthy. 

At first, healthy to me was ordering grilled chicken instead of fried. How embarrassing. 

Seriously though, I took small steps like ordering grilled foods and using less butter. Those helped me.

Next I started incorporating more vegetables into our meals. I was open to try things I didn't like before and I discovered I actually love almost every vegetable out there! We also shopped more at the Farmers Market. This was a tough one, but when I would go to Food Lion I wouldn't wander around in the aisles. I stayed clear of the inside aisles and only bought from the walls. I started at produce, went by meats, and ended with the dairy and bakery sections.

Grocery lists and meal planning came after that. I would make grocery lists and only buy what I wrote down. No more looking at the clearance rack or buying a soda at the check out counter. Meal planning was extremely hard at first, but now I can practically do it in my sleep. 

On a real note; I've had dreams about what we will have for dinner before. No lie. 

Then I became obsessed with what was really in the foods we ate. Even "healthy" foods. This is the big step. And certainly by far the hardest.

The amount of pesticides, genetically modified organisms, antibiotics, carcinogens, hormones, infected pus, artificial coloring, and many other nasty poisons in our food is unfathomable. What's even more mind blowing is that the majority of our food is banned in every other country (even third world countries), but because we care more about what show is being recorded and the next "get rich" scheme, we don't do anything about it. Sad. When I noticed what was going into our food I quickly switched to an all organic, non GMO lifestyle. My health is too important to me. The health of my family is not worth taking a risk on the poison our USDA and FDA feed us. 

I cut out the "healthy" foods. I don't buy anything low fat, low sodium, calorie free, any of that. Those words may look nice and make you feel better about what you're buying, but the truth of it is that the fat and sodium they took out of the product is now replaced with even worse ingredients. Or as I like to say, poison. 

When we ate meat we were buying it from a local farm. Grass-fed, no antibiotics, no hormones. Meat is meat no matter how it is raised, but I justified what we were doing since we were supporting local farmers and eating a "healthier" meat. A few months ago Zak and I became vegetarians. Not full vegetarians, we finished the few packs of deer we had in the freezer and we eat Atlantic caught seafood every once in a while, but our diet is mainly plant based. 

Working through all of these changes definitely took a lot of work when it came to grocery shopping. I went from $600 to blow on food to $300 I had to skillfully plan for food. I had known Food Lion my entire life and all of a sudden I switched to Whole Foods (which is nothing in comparison, WF all the way!). I went from a greasy, fatty, meat eating diet to an almost raw plant based diet. There were hard moments. It was a tough road. It still is a tough road. 

So back to our original question, "How am I able to shop at Whole Foods, feed my family real food, and only spend $300 a month?" I just explained the road it took for me to get here so now I'll share the present details.

With $300 per month, I count on $75 per week. Some weeks may be more and some may be less. There are many things I only purchase once a month or every other week so they don't count as every week expenses. I'm going to show you just one week of shopping. 

On Saturday or Sunday we usually head out to the Farmers Market to grab some produce. We do most of our shopping here from Spring until Fall. The majority of vendors shut down during the Winter months so there aren't many options.