Living Paycheck to Paycheck

My wonderful boyfriend has put together a diet/fitness plan for me!  Now I wish that I’d waited and not bought groceries so that I could have just followed his list.  Since he knows what he’s doing, he tailored the grocery list and meal lists to things I generally like to eat…only I hardly bought any of those things in an attempt to eat smart and cheaply.  There’s only a couple problems with the diet at all and one is that it focuses more on dieting food than healthy food, but I think that after I finish the first 21 days and we reevaluate what I need to do, I’ll be able to choose my meals better.

The other problem is the cost!  If I were to go to the grocery store today and buy everything that I don’t already have, I estimate that I’d spend about $150…that is well over the $2.04 I have left for the month.  So I have to decide whether to start this diet on Thursday or wait until June, a week and a half from now.  I’m very excited to start this and the exercise plan NOW while I’m still motivated, though I hate like hell to have to blow my budget.  What’s a girl to do?

My Pantry Diet is still going, but it won’t last much longer.  I have approximately enough food to last into next week, but not much else.  My dad gave me two 2lb. bags of frozen ground venison (that he killed and butchered himself with my uncle and their pals); I used one bag with two boxes of Hamburger Helper and felt like I was committing sacrilege.  Venison is soooo good and I used it with Hamburger Helper.  I’m so ashamed.  So I’d rather save my other 2 lb. bag for something better, so I might not count it in with the rest of the pantry diet.

 My boyfriend is going to create a meal plan and exercise plan for me to start as soon as I’m off this crazy pantry diet even though he doesn’t want me to lose any weight.  He’s really into fitness, though we both suck at keeping to a healthy diet: me because I don’t know where to start and I’m bad at sticking to things, and him because it’s easier not to stick to it.  Translation: laziness.  I’m looking forward to what he puts together for me.

I’m still doing the whole “no buying groceries” thing.  I’ve had spaghetti for lunch and dinner everyday…well…for lunch, anyway.  Last night I took a nap that led me to sleep from 6:45 to 10:15pm when my boyfriend called and woke me.  This frustrated me because I didn’t want to miss The Office or Scrubs and had actually set my alarm for 7:30 so I’d have time to fix dinner and watch TV.  Then I got to read as my best friend and I gchatted that she couldn’t BELIEVE that I’d missed it, that it was THE BEST EVER!!!  MAJOR PLOT DEVELOPMENTS!  MAY-JOR!  Sigh.

Anyway, I slept through dinner, but I forced myself to bake some biscuits to add to my lunch for today so that I wouldn’t get hungry because I knew that I wouldn’t buy anything no matter how hungry I might be.  I can’t decide yet if this whole thing is healthy for me.  I was afraid that sticking to the pantry foods would cause me to gain weight, but I actually feel thinner (this MIGHT be from missing dinner two nights in a row, but who knows?).  I haven’t weighed myself yet, but it would be awesome if this financial goal was helping a weight goal, too.  I want to weigh between 130-35, and when I weighed myself last week I was at about 140.  I’m quite tall, so on graphs that show how much a person should weigh given his/her height, I should weigh between 125-145.  The last time I was at 125 I was WAY too thin, though, and it took forever to gain weight back, so I definitely do not want to go that low again; I just want to fit into my old work clothes that are sitting in my closet.

In other news, I signed up for the ING Direct Orange Savings Account.  I received $25 just for depositing $250.  For each referral I give, I get $10.  So far I’ve been credited with an extra $20.  If anyone would like a referral for the savings account or the checking account, just e-mail me at livingpaychecktopaycheck at gmail dot com.  Just tell which account you want; the same rules apply to get the $25.

My weekend starts in less than an hour now!  Yay!