When I first started my health and fitness journey with Legg Day Fitness, I had some limiting doubts. Like not having time to work out, it costs more money to eat healthy, it takes too much effort to prepare food, the list goes on and on. All these doubts I'm sure everyone goes through, as my family did. With time, action and patience, my mentality has changed and I've proved myself wrong many times. My doubts are no longer doubts. This is what I've learned...
Working out does not take a lot of time if you plan accordingly. Depending on which workout program you are on, you will spend 4 to 6 hours a week at the gym. When I ride my bike, it's an additional 2 to 3 hours a week. Really 9 hours is not a lot of time to devote to working out to live longer. We have adjusted our family schedules slightly to allow time for the workouts and no one notices the difference.
It costs more money to eat healthy is completely wrong. Once I did the math it is much cheaper to eat healthy then to eat out every day. Before signing onto the Legg Day Fitness program, I ate out for breakfast every morning, every lunch and went out to dinner at least 4-5 times per week. Breakfasts were about $8 dollars, lunches were about $12 dollars and dinners for the whole family were between $35 to $40.
Let's do the math. $8 dollar breakfast x 7 days + $12 dollar lunches x 7 days + $35 family dinners x 4 nights = $240 in take out a week. This is on top of the $250 average we spent a week on groceries. So $490 a week on food.
Once we removed all the bad stuff from the grocery list and added the recommend food list to our grocery order, our average weekly grocery bill is $300. So a net increase of $50 dollars. We only eat out one night a week now, so a typical night out for dinner at Chili's is around $40. Total weekly savings between groceries and eating out is about $150 to $200, just by eating healthy and cooking for ourselves. The money saved each week now goes to paying for two months of my Legg Day Fitness program. The rest leftover is saved or spent elsewhere, which has helped us not rack up our credit card. Â
My gym membership is $19.99 a month, no big deal there. For my membership for the entire year, I'm spending the same amount I was weekly on eating out. The gym was a way better investment for me.Â
In regards to food prep and cooking, yes it's very overwhelming when you start and does make you want to quit and call for takeout. But once you get the routine down and learn how to not use every pot in the kitchen it is easy. We have dinner and lunch made every night within 45 min to an hour, which is about the same amount of time it takes to call for takeout, wait to pick it up and drive to and from to get the food. On Saturdays, my wife cuts up and preps all of our meat for the week and freezes it in individual packages.
Breakfast is down to 10 to 15 minutes tops with clean up. It's all about routine and getting past that 21 day hurdle of doing something to change bad habits. So little adjustments to the game plan just like in football can make great things happen.
The biggest cost from this entire adventure is the cost of buying new clothes. Which I enjoy as I can fit into a large slim fit. Overall the small sacrifices we have made have ultimately changed our lives for the better. We feel better, look better and do better every single day!