The Flat Belly Diet and Budgeting
My husband and I just started the Flat Belly Diet, which has been working wonders for us both thus far. We really like it. Just so the rest of this blog post will make a bit more sense, unlike most diets, the flat belly diet only has three rules:
- Eat 400 calories per meal (and 4 meals a day for women, five meals a day for men),
- Eat every four hours,
- Eat a MUFA (Mono-unsaturated fatty acid) at every meal.
The nice thing about it is that while they have recipes and suggestions for what to eat, as long as you follow the rules, you can eat whatever you like. And the reason that you can eat what you like is that you’re bringing in fewer calories than you’re using. Most people’s resting metabolic rate (RMR, i.e., the calories you burn just by being alive) is between 1500 and 1800. If you’re taking in 1600 calories of food and do anything other than lie in bed all day long, you’re going to be burning more than you take in.
Okay, but what does this have to do with budgeting…
A good budget is like a good diet because it doesn’t dictate your every move (and you can go a little crazy every now and again), but it provides a basic structure and purpose to your spending and saving.
In that, the Flat Belly Diet (or any good diet) is a lot like a good budget.
There are a few simple rules and guidelines —
- Spend Less Than You Earn,
- Save the Difference,
- Avoid Debt,
- Invest (Some of) Your Savings,
— and once you’ve met those, the rest is up to you.
A budget helps you make sure that you’re bringing in more money than you’re spending, so the difference can go to savings, where it can hang out and grow a little until you need it (emergency) or want it (travel, or a new pair of shoes, or whatever). Or you can invest some of the difference, and it’ll hang out and grow a little faster for you and you can have it at some time in the future (putting a down payment on a car, or a home, or when you’re ready to retire).
And if you’re on a budget, and you’re spending less than you earn and saving the difference, then you’re less likely to go into debt, because you have a buffer of savings to fall back on in hard times.
But dieting/budgeting is hard
That’s the other thing that budgeting and dieting have in common: most people think budgets and diets are hard to stick to and constrict your life, therefore eliminating all of your fun.
Going a little crazy… and staying on diet
On the Flat Belly Diet, if you want to have a bowl of ice cream for dinner, you can. You just have to eat it with a handful of nuts (or some other MUFA) and you can only have 400 calories of ice cream and MUFA. If you’re having Breyer’s French Vanilla Ice Cream, which has 140 calories per 1/2 cup, then you can have 1 cup of ice cream with 2/3 oz (about 13) pecan halves (105 calories). For most people that’d be fine, but if you wanted MORE ice cream, you could try Breyer’s Fat Free Vanilla Ice Cream (98 calories per 1/2 cup) and you could have a cup and a half of ice cream with your 13 pecan halves (or 2 Tbsp of almonds, or whatever).
Going a little crazy… and staying on budget
When you’ve got a budget, and you want to spend $300 on a pair of shoes, or a ski trip, or whatever, you can. You have to make sure you’ve put some money in savings that month, and that you’re bills are all taken care of, but if, after those things are done, you have $300 left over, you can spend it on whatever you like.
The point
A diet or a budget doesn’t have to be constricting and ruin your fun. Quite the opposite, in fact. If you know how many calories you’re taking in, you know that you can afford to eat ice cream for dinner. If you know how much money you have coming in and going out, then you know that you can afford to spend $300 on your favorite thing without overdrawing your account or being unable to pay rent the next month. It’s liberating instead of constricting because it frees you from worrying about whether your ruining your health by gaining weight, or screwing yourself financially because you bought X thing.
Budget is NOT a “Four-letter word”
Budgeting doesn’t have to be complicated, or frustrating, or limiting. The biggest thing it will do for you, like a good diet, is make you more aware of the choices that you’re making. And many a guru will tell you that awareness of your actions is the key to success in anything. If you want to lose weight, write down what you’re eating and pay attention to the calories you’re taking in. If you want to get control of your spending and start saving and paying down debt, keep track of how much money you’re bringing in and what you’re spending money on.
It’s as simple as that. No one said it would be the easiest thing you’ve ever done, but, to paraphrase Theodore Roosevelt, Nothing worth doing is ever easy.
