Holy smokes! I'm liking lo-carbing, but my grocery bill (for 2 adults) has doubled. Yesterday we came away from teh grocery store with 3 pitifully small plastic bags of groceries and a bill for $125. And we are going about once every 4 or 5 days. Anyone have ideas to keep the bills down while not investing in cheap carb products?

(And the low-carb products are another thing ... $25 a month per adult for basic vitamins, $8 for a bottle of lc ketchup, $15 for a tub of Atkins bake mix.. the bills add up!)

I am of the opinion that most people who have money appear to just not know how to shop!!! ANybody who complains about the expense, ususally has money to spend!! I will offer a bum students opinion..

Regular groceries need not be expensive:
1. Buy the fruit and vegies that are season. If you don't know, learn.
2. Buy meat on special and freeze. Figure out the night when meat is priced to clear - may only have a couple of days before use by but if you freeze it is ok.
3. Eggs are usually good cheap protein. Quiche (crustless) offers a good couple of cheap dinners.

As to the low carb products -
Why, oh why, are you spending $8 on ketchup and $15 on bake mix for one?? Why are you baking? It is entirely possible to do this diet without baking, just keep it simple. If you must indulge the baked sweet tooth, you can make bake mix yourself for much cheaper - recpie on this site, check it out! :-)

If ketchup is a neccesity, it is a neccisty. But, I ask, are you putting ketchup on meat just to make it taste? If so, maybe you just need to learn new ways to cook meats - spices etc. Again, there are heaps of easy recepies on this sight.

Please remember, most people not in the US, and we have a few on this board, manage to low carb without franken low-carb foods. Be aware if that is what makes the diet expensive, you have chosen for it to be expensive, not that it has to be.

Some very good points in the above posts. If you do a search of the forum, you will find several threads (at least!) on tips to help keep your grocery bill down. Having said that, if you are used to living on a grocery budget that included lots of cheap high carb foods such as pasta, rice and potatoes and very little meats there really is no way that you can keep your grocery bill from increasing when you cut them out and start purchasing more protein and vegetables. There are a lot of ways that you can keep the cost down, however such as:

-Go through the grocery store ads in the Sunday paper and note which stores have good deals on things that you purchase most. I always base my menus on what's on sale and if I need to, I will shop at more than 1 store to take advantage of the deals as long as my time and extra gas costs don't negate the savings of going to more than one store.
-When you find a particularly good deal on something, buy extra and freeze it for later.
-Avoid purchasing expensive low carb specialty items unless you absolutely must have them. These items can be handy but as you've pointed out, they are also high cost and as others have pointed out, they are mostly convenience items and it's quite possible to low carb successfully without them.
-Buy fruits and veggies that are currently in season. If nothing you like is currently in season, get frozen (which are also frequently on sale).
-Get larger cuts and/or quantities of meats and cut them up yourself unless the store offers that service for free. Freeze in portion sizes that you will use.
-Buy cheaper cuts of meat and learn how best to cook them so that they are tender and flavorful (crock pots are great for this purpose!).
-Use or freeze your leftovers before they spoil. Throwing away food because it has spoiled before you can eat it accounts for more of an increase in people's grocery bills than they realize.

Buy whole foods such as meats and veggies. Avoid anything with Low Carb slapepd across the lable or it will automatically cost more. For example the new Carb options spaghetti sauce costs around $2 more then the Ragu lite (no sugar added) with about the same number of carbs in each.

Learn to like chicken and other cheaper meats. Beef can be expencive, so look for cheaper cuts and the "junk" meats. Beef heart is extreamly cheap and makes excellent fajitas.

Shop early in the morning and you can find meats that have been marked a few dollars off as it is nearing the sell by date. Examine this meat closly for discoloration or other signs of poor quality. Most though would be just fine.

Learn to stretch out meats. Make soups or dishes with alot of veggies. Remember too that a typical serving of meat is only around 4oz, so a 8oz steak can easily feed two is prepared in a meal.

If you have an extra little spot in your house (we live in a campus aparmtne and actually found room) invest in a small chest freezer. This will allow you to buy more meats when they are on sell and store for later.

Make friends with hunters. Many times they will have extra meat they are willing to share. Or look into hunting yourself. A deer (at least the species we have around here) can easily last an entire winter.

Also make friends with people who have veggie gardens. When zucchini comes into season you will be flooded with more then you have every seen before. It is also a wonderful LC veggie that can be used in a large variety of ways,
.

I think you are right about getting a chest freezer. We just need to get more organized. We have a very small freezer right now, so we end up only buying maybe a week's worth of meats at a time. I think most of the "expense" is the difference between having a cartload of cereal, rice, crackers, soup, etc and a bagful of (smaller) packages of chicken and other meats. We eat a couple dozen eggs a week so far.

The ketchup thing ain't a necessity, it was more for fun. I don't mind spending the money on things like that just to make life more interesting, but it's a heck of a lot more pricey than regular carb items.

The comment about the lo-carb specialty items was right on. I was pricing out lo-carb dressings as well, and the specialty Caesar dressing was nearly twice as much as the regular - and the difference in carbs was something like 0.2 versus 0.3. Big deal!

Several tactics I would recommend:
Look at the recipe section on this to find lower cost alternatives.
Use the product recommendations section to find cheaper products
example: the new low carbHeinz ketchup is under $3 .

Get on the email list's of online merchants who sell low carb products then stock up during a sale.
example : http://www.vitacost.com/Store/Produ...108&bt=products
is currently having a 60% off Atkins products.

I buy meats/cheese/vegetables in bulk at places like Sam's.
This WOE is more expensive in the grocery department but you can't put a pricetag on health.

Erika

Learn to enjoy cheaper cuts of meat. Afterall, this is a diet that Native Americans and other cultures thrived on but they ate the organ meats, ox tails, tripe, shanks of beef etc and they are a bargain. Remember , back in the day, chicken wings was once a bargain. Beef heart is a great price. I have only seen it sliced in the meat case at the butchers and it looks so good. I am not saying eat this every day but use thes to stretch your budget and become familiar with other less popular cuts of meat.

You can find cheaper vitamins. Some drug stores have vitamin clubs which offer discounts to patrons.

Also, don't buy Atkins products. They're way overpriced. I get low carb bread for 3.29, low carb cereal for 2.29, I won't buy those outrageously highly priced low carb specialty items. Trader Joes is a great place to shop if you have them. Also, make your own baking mix. Use wheat gluten, soy flour, whey or wheat protein isolate. Lots of regular products are coming out in low carb versions and they aren't more expensive, generally. Buy those instead of speciality low carb items you'd find on the diet food aisle or in a specialty store.

I buy frozen, chicken breasts. Works out to just over $2.50 a pound, meat on special. I don't eat a lot of bacon, but I get it on sale and cook it all up and freeze what I won't eat right away.

The supermarkets in my town charge outrageous prices on produce, so I go to the little natural foods stores that have BETTER looking produce for half or less of the price. Go figure.

Excellent tips so far. Also don't forget the big picture. How much is improved health worth to you? What is the cost of treatment for T2 diabetes, lost promotional opportunities, forced disability retirement, and even early death?

My point is that you're worth it!

I've found that we are spending more on meat, but less on cookies, crackers, cereal and the like. After all, a box of cookies is more expensive than a pound of cheese! When I balance what we are buying with what we no longer buy, we do just about the same. And we are eating so much better.

Some of my favorite cost cutters:

*frozen berries instead of fresh. So much cheaper, keep longer, and just as good on yogurt, cream cheese, low carb ice cream, or even by themselves.

*Meat stretching can be done without macaroni or potatoes. I've found turnips to be tastier than potatoes for stews & pot roast. Prosciutto is expensive, but when you serve it with a cantalope, it's a meal. Meats and cheese work great on salads and are so healthy and filling.

*I tend to buy the Atkins bars, but use them as meal replacements when I'm eating lunch at my desk or for a on-the-go breakfast. Used this way, it is cheaper or as cheap as a meal I can pick up at a store.

*Go over your grocery receipt and see where the high ticket items are, and if they are worth it. My first impressions were wrong...the stuff I was paying the most for turned out to be things I really did want, because I was buying quality things that would yield several servings. Plain yogurt I berry and splenda for myself was cheaper than buying several single serving ones, for instance.

*And yes, look at the front end/back end equation. It's more expensive to live on meat and vegetables than it is to live on boxed mac & cheese. Front end, that is. On the back end, have you priced statin drugs and diabetes supplies? Not to mention the doctor bills?

I can't believe how much cheaper this woe is than how we were eating before. I mean, a pound of cheese is $3, but a bag of Doritos is $3.59. cheese lasts all week, Doritos last two days so two or three bags were necessary. 3 lb bag of chicken breasts at Sam's is $5.97, huge bag of almonds is $5 (lasts me a good 4 months), 5 romaine hearts $4 and so on.
One container of Oreos is $3+ and how long do those last?
I've cut all of that out and everyone here just accepts it. I think I cut at least $40 off my bill, probably more, and everyone is eating so much healthier, even if they at first protested, they have adjusted.

I came back to mention what the last 2 posters,adkpam and Rosie Real. When I began lcing, my shopping budget didn't change much. This was because there was no more chips, candy, or cookies or cereal in the house. My family is not low carbing so we will have some chips in the house. They never finish the bag before it goes stale and I throw it out. There are no cookies. I think that it was low carb junk that made shopping more expensive not the pork chops.I also realize that I was the one eating the majority of the junk that we had in the house.

I am much like freckles. I am the only lcer in this house (2 teens of my own and another staying with us) and a thin dh. I don't buy hardly any lc franken-foods. My grocery bill is high enough. I do find however that I have more energy than I used to..and therefore am making them(The non lc'ers) a lot of meals completely from scratch..fried rice, pasta with white and tomato sauces, home made teriyaki sauces and sweet and sour sauces etc. I don't buy much in the way of prepared foods anymore.That is also saving me a lot of money. Its good for me...I enjoy cooking.
Personally I don't buy bake mix and stuff like that because eating baked goodies and such is what got me here in the first place.
ANd I do work outside of the home as well. I never would have this energy before Atkins.