The cost of unhealthy living

This post was originally published at Get Fit Chicks. It may refer to posts on Get Fit Chicks that no longer exist. Please email me if you run into any of those and I will break the links. More information about the reposting is available here

Every once in a while, I stop and take a bit of an inventory of what's happening in my life related to my health – how much am I exercising, what kind of exercise am I doing, what’s my diet like, what are my sleep patterns like, what's my stress level – and readjust it.

There’s all kinds of talk in the media about the cost of unhealthy living and the strain it is putting (and will put in the future) on our health care system…we’ve all seen it – more diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, rates of obesity – the list is endless.

Right now I know I need to eat better – I'm much better than I was this summer, but there's still room for improvement. We started creating a weekly meal plan, including snacks, and I'm pretty good at sticking to it if we remember to print it and post it in the kitchen – I know I need to do some other exercise besides yoga and I know I need more sleep. Stress is pretty good right now.

This summer I took a look at the cost of some of my unhealthy choices. The cost to me right now, not to me (or the health care system) in the future. And wow, was it motivation! I had slipped into some unhealthy habits that I'm blaming partly on the somewhat unstable daycare situation we were in, some mini-crises we were dealing with as a family, and job uncertainty. And that resulted in some stress eating and more lunches out at work than I would like. So I spent a week tracking what I was eating and this is what I discovered:

In seven days I ate an extra 4500 calories (YUCK!) and it cost me close to $30. An annual habit like that would have me packing on the pounds and would cost me over $1500. Granted, I don't normally eat that way, but this was a slip up that needed correcting and looking at it from a cost perspective really opened my eyes and helped me change the bad habits I was starting to form.

Even though I'm trying my best to eat from the crazy diet right now, there are still ways to make choices that might not be the best choices. Now that plain dairy (ie not cheese or sour cream), flour, and sugar have been added again, most baking is okay. Potato chips (as long as I read the ingredients) are okay...there are many ways to make poor choices even when following a somewhat restrictive diet.

I had planned to do a cost experiment again this week, but I've been under the weather and home all week, so the opportunity to make poor choices at work was completely taken away. I expect to be back at work on Monday, so starting Sunday I'm going to track a week's worth of food to what the extra cost is…

I’m thinking I'm down to more like $5 – $10 a week, and hopefully only a few hundred calories but we'll see...I'd like it to be no calories and less than $5 if at all possible!