Alright, for real. I know a lot of people will sit there and tell you that eating right and eating healthy costs so much money. Actually, many of you have probably seen this photo before:

Or you have seen some sort of variation of the photo. But let’s be honest. If you’re going to go to McDonald’s, is your goal to really eat something nutritious and good for you? Chances are, you’re probably craving that delicious cheeseburger and their “crack” fries as I like to call them.

When I was pregnant, I craved red meat and potatoes….EVERY SINGLE DAY. It was horrible. I wanted to eat McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King…you name it, I wanted it. Prior to being pregnant, I exercised regularly and ate healthy as well. But there were issues during my pregnancy that held me back a little bit from pushing myself as hard as I usually did. So, I slacked. I ate junk and I enjoyed it.

But after I had my son, it was no longer enjoyable for me to be eating the way that I did. It was disgusting to me. I disgusted myself because I knew what I was doing to my body. In April, 2015 I decided that I no longer wanted to eat from these franchise fast food chains anymore and I didn’t want to subject my health and the health of my baby to the “crap” that as in these foods.

I kept track of a few of my grocery bills from the past few months and noticed a trend. The further into my pregnancy I got, the more we spent on groceries. Of course, I was probably eating more because I was growing a human in my body but I also wasn’t eating healthy. So, to feed a family of two, in the months of October, November, and December, we totaled about $1,250 in groceries. That doesn’t include all of the times we went out to eat which was about 3 times a week to fast food places and at least once or twice on the weekends at other restaurants. I’d say we totaled about another $150 A WEEK in crap food. $150 a week for 3 months? $1,800. Whoah. Alright, that’s a little disgusting. I never realized we spent that much! That brings us to a grand total of $3,050 in just 3 months! I could’ve put a lot of that money towards my car payment!

Anyway, let’s stay on track here. I bet many of you think that’s ridiculous. It really is. The REALLY sad thing about this is that most of that food that we had purchased in just those 3 months were unhealthy and processed foods. Not only that, I’m willing to bet we didn’t eat most of it and wasted it by throwing away what went bad. Or we just didn’t want to eat leftovers because we had so much junk.

I finally had enough. Enough of the extra calories I didn’t need, enough with being unhealthy, and enough with the overspending and constant waste. It wasn’t good for our bodies and it wasn’t good on my wallet either. I had my baby in February and I couldn’t workout for a few weeks until my doctor gave me the “okay.” Even once I had the permission to work out, I still had to be careful as not to injure myself or put too much stress on my body since I was still healing.

Lucky for me, the only thing that I was really staying with to keep me healthy during my pregnancy was Shakeology. Yes, that superfood, nutrient-dense shake that you hear myself and countless others talk about. It’s really an amazing drink. Anyway, I made a decision to stop eating fast food, stop eating junk, and I made a commitment to drinking Shakeology everyday. I made little changes here and there when it came to my diet. I didn’t do anything drastic but I made a conscious effort to put good things into my body. At 7 weeks post partum and to 10 weeks post partum, just those little changes made a HUGE difference.

I kid you not. I didn’t exercise. Maybe a couple walks here and there. Trust me, I wanted to work out so badly but I had to be careful.

Those little changes that I did not only for my body and my health, were also a huge change for our wallets.

Once we started changing our eating habits, our lives were just transformed. The reason we were able to save money was because we were more conscious about what we were eating. We stopped eating fast food. That cut out that $1800 that I talked to you about earlier. What are we left with? A $1250 bill for 3 months…so let’s say that we had a $400 bill each month between my husband and I. Well, we already have the basics. We have the tools we need to cool and all of the spices. Let’s face it, spices are expensive. It takes a long time to build that collection up! But as we started meal prepping and planning out the meals we were going to eat and ate more of the fresh fruits and veggies we could get, we started seeing that our bank account wasn’t going away as quickly.

We also noticed that if we are buying meat, that’s when the bill goes up. We stock up on meat when it’s on sale and put it in our deep freezer. We usually buy meat only once or twice a month (if we need to) and stash it away. But most of our bills are all produce and eggs. We rarely get bread or dairy. Our bill went from about $400 (or more) a month to less than $300 a month. Take our totally from the 3 months while I was pregnant ($3050) and to 3 months now, it’s about $1200…total. We barely go out to eat at restaurants and if we do, it’s not at an overly priced heart attack shop. That’s a savings of $1850! That money can then be put away in our savings or for other fun things we would like to do as a family. But one of the things that we like to use that money on, is our Shakeology.

Shakeology is a superfood, nutrient-dense shake that is made to give you everything the body needs in one daily dose. And it’s delicious. If you want to learn more about Shakeology, you can click here. This shake has given us a lot of health benefits and helped us with increased energy and helps me with weight loss. Remember up above when I talked about my weight loss? This is what I used.

So, many people say that those health shakes are expensive. Really, when it comes to your health…it’s not. Here’s an example of what I get when I drink Shakeology and what I get when I eat my favorite pregnancy meal and Starbucks drink…

But Shakeology is SO expensive. Right? Wrong. It’s not that expensive when you put things into perspective. If I drink a Shake for $4.00 a day, (120.00 per month) our bill is STILL so much lower than it was before. Plus, as a coach, I receive a discount on my Shakeology as well.

Sometimes, you just need to put things into perspective and see what is important to you. Health, fitness, and my family are incredibly important to me. I put all of that at risk when I decided that it wasn’t imperative for me to be the healthiest me possible. If you have kids and a family, you know where I am coming from. If you are sitting there thinking about how you can make yourself the healthiest and happiest version of you, then this is one step how.

I am more than happy to go over more of this with anyone willing to learn. I love helping people and I love seeing people reach their goals. Nothing is impossible. And this is the proof of it. 😉

If you have any interest in learning more about Shakeology, accountability groups, or anything related to what I talked about, please feel free to fill out this form and I will contact you as soon as possible! Thank you for stopping by and taking the time to read my post. <3