Helping Myself Take Smaller Servings -- Better for My Health & Finances

This is an old dieter's trick, but it's also something I'm doing to save money on groceries. Serving myself portions in smaller containers.

I started this with coffee a while ago. I switched from the 12-oz mug on the left to the 8-oz cup on the right. I originally began this for health reasons. As it turns out, I'm also saving money. I drink far less coffee now that I'm using the smaller cup. Yes, I do get more refills in a day, but not enough to equal what I'd been drinking using a 12-oz mug. 

Another change for health reasons -- my morning yogurt. I'm lactose intolerant. Too much yogurt can be too much for me. I switched from a 6-oz custard cup (on the right) to a 4-oz canning container (on the left). I also now do this with pudding and ice cream. Smaller portions made simple. I'm eating slightly less, but not so much less that I feel deprived. 

Did you know that for many years in the USA a portion of ice cream was only a 1/2-cup or 4 ounces? It's been recently updated to reflect how much Americans actually consider a serving -- 2/3 cup. Meanwhile, commercial yogurt portions have been shrinking. Do you remember the days when individual portions of yogurt were sold in 8-oz containers? Then they went to 6 ounces, and most recently I've seen several 5-ounce containers of yogurt at the store. Using a 4-oz squat canning jar helps me portion my food better, whether it's ice cream, yogurt, pudding or anything else of which I should probably eat a smaller amount.

At lunch I've been choosing to use a salad plate instead of a dinner plate many days. This forces me to put less on my plate. So, if I'm having something like chips with soup or a sandwich, I automatically put fewer chips on my plate. I don't always use a salad plate, however. Sometimes I want to use the larger dinner plate so that I will eat more of something, like salad or fresh garden fruit or vegetables. But for the days that we are having some chips with lunch, we can get by with a smaller bag of chips by using smaller plates.

I'm doing something good for my health and saving money.

Recent Shopping

Nothing to do with shopping -- just my neighbor's spectacular front yard.
They chose to install a gorgeous garden instead of a traditional lawn.

This is not news to any of us at this point, but prices are almost everywhere. I've been shocked at times over some of these prices. Perhaps I've been out of the spending loop for a while, so I didn't realize some price increases had occurred before now. Or perhaps these increases are part of the recent inflation explosion. Here's my recent shopping experience.

On my husband's birthday I went to McDonald's to bring back a lunch just for him. My husband has always loved 1/4-pounders. So I got him a 1/4-pounder with cheese and a small order for French fries, no drink. My cost for this lunch was just under $9. This price for 1 sandwich and a small order of fries was shocking to me. I could have found a deal, but I was looking for his favorites. I will say, this made my husband very happy.

At Fred Meyer (Kroger affiliate) the price on a gallon of milk went up 10 cents per gallon in just one week. The price on milk there is now 80 cents more per gallon than it was 1 year ago. For my husband's and my joint birthday celebration, I wanted to pick up deli salads from Fred Meyer, so I didn't have as much cooking work to do for that gathering. Again I was shocked by the prices on various salads from the deli. The potato salad was the only reasonably-priced salad at $3.50/lb. (And I think that's too much for basically potatoes and mayo.) The rest of the deli salads were between $5 and $8 per pound, with the majority in the $7 and $8 range. I bought some of the potato salad then turned and shopped the produce section for easy to prepare produce items to use as sides. I bought grape tomatoes for $2.99 ($4.78/lb), strawberries for $2.97 ($1.49/lb), and 23-oz stir-fry kit that made 8 servings, marked down to $2.49 ($1.73/lb pre-cooked).

The exception to all these price increases was a sale on 80/20 ground beef, at $2.77/lb in 3-lb chubs. I bought the limit of 15 pounds. While this was a sale price and for the time being a one-off price event, I wanted to mention something that I've seen happen in the past (most recent not quite a decade ago) when livestock feed prices have gone way up. In this situation, ranchers have a tough choice to make: do they pay more for feed for their large animals and then hope to get a high price per head down the road, or do they decide it's better to shrink the herd now (sell of cattle to be butchered) and avoid the down the road possibilities? What I've seen happen is the second of the two scenarios, where ranchers sell off a lot of their cattle and the market sees a glut in beef, temporarily reducing the price per pound. Unfortunately, this is very temporary, as when ranchers sell off part of their herd to save on feed costs, it means that in several months there will be far less beef on the market, and prices will go way high, staying that way until feed prices come down again.. So, when you see a low price on beef (if your household has beef eaters), buy what you find and freeze it. Don't assume that beef prices will be immune to any of this inflation. Just a heads' up. Okay, back to the post.

My last price observation is the cost of gas. In my area, the price of a gallon of the cheapest unleaded is bumping the $5/gallon mark. Gas was $4.99 9/10 a gallon near me the other day. This is the highest we've ever seen gas in my area. Even in 2008 and 2009, the highest only hit $4.18/gallon.

What price increases have you noticed in the last week or so?