Grocery Spotlight ~ Whole Foods Based Family of Two

Hi, my name is Kiersten and I spend a lot of my time over at Vibrant Life Army Wife where I blog about all things nutrition and natural living and how to incorporate them into your lifestyle as a military spouse. One of the major barriers to healthy eating for a lot of people is the cost and I get that. Eating healthy can be quite pricey, but it certainly doesn’t have to be. So I’m thrilled to be here and share a little bit about my process, my meal plan, and disclose how much we spend on food each week.

About Our Family

My husband and I live in Fort Hood, TX with our black lab and golden retriever fur babies. We don’t eat the same diet 100% of the time. I have been gluten free for over three years now because of some serious digestive issues and an autoimmune disorder, but my husband loves his bread and he seems to feel okay with it so I let it go. In addition to avoiding gluten, I also stay away from grains, legumes, industrial seed oils, refined sugar, and most dairy, while my husband eats pretty much whatever he wants. He eats what I cook for him and what I pack him for lunch and rarely complains, so I figure a few garbage meals here and there won’t kill him. Gotta choose your battles, am I right?

So what do we eat? Well, we eat a ton of vegetables, healthy fats, pastured eggs, some meat (grass-fed/pastured whenever possible), wild-caught seafood, and a little bit of fruit with some nuts and seeds on occasion. Focusing on buying quality food (i.e. grass-fed/pastured meats, pastured eggs, organic produce, responsibly sourced fats, etc.) can be expensive, but I figure spending more now to support our health will only save us money in the future in terms of health care costs. Plus it makes us feel awesome and that’s worth a little extra money to me!

The thing is though, eating healthy doesn’t have to break the budget. We spent barely over one hundred dollars on groceries this week for the two of us and we had more than enough to feed both of our rather hearty appetites. In our family there are three components that I believe are key to not breaking the bank when it comes to buying groceries:

Meal planning ensures that we use everything we buy so nothing goes to waste.
Thanks to our cow share, we always have grass-fed beef on hand, and since we bought it in bulk, we were able to get a lower price per pound than what is generally available at the grocery store.
Buying certain things in bulk at Costco saves us money because they have some pretty awesome deals. This particular week we spent very little on groceries because we used beef from our cow share, chicken, some veggies, and a few snacks we bought from Costco the week prior.

What We Spent

Groceries: $104.13
Restaurants:

DFAC: $2.65

Freebirds: $12.83

Chipotle: $19.32

Percentage of Budget

Produce: 40%
Protein: 30%
Misc: 13%
Grains: 6%
Dairy: 4%
Fat: 4%
Beverages: 3%

Our miscellaneous category included things like snacks and baking staples like coconut sugar. These things are not 100% necessary and we could remove them from our budget if we needed to cut costs.

Where We Shopped

HEB - I do the bulk of our shopping at HEB because they have a decent selection of organic produce and other healthy food but at very reasonable prices. They lack some of the more specialty items though which requires me to shop elsewhere at times.

Natural Grocers - I love Natural Grocers because it’s like a smaller, less expensive Whole Foods. They don’t have everything that Whole Foods has, but what they do have is typically a bit cheaper, which I definitely appreciate. I buy most of my bulk items (nuts, seeds, baking staples, dried fruit, etc.) there because they tend to be very affordable. They are also the only grocery store within 30 minutes that sells pastured eggs and grass-fed whole milk (the only milk I buy for my husband). They also have a ton of delicious healthy snacks and I can never leave there without a little treat. This time it was an all natural ginger ale and a single serving packet of raw walnut butter (YUM!).